


hope your heart is strong enough (be your everything)

by gravityinglass



Series: forever seems lonely without you [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Magical Realism, Urban Magic AU, far too many nosy family members and friends, write the fic you want to see in the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-03-31 23:30:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13985610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gravityinglass/pseuds/gravityinglass
Summary: There wasn’t much on the list of things in this world that Dylan Strome hated, but Mitch Marner topped that list with ease.The list of things Dylan loved was much longer, but Mitch managed to top that one too.It was frustrating.It was even more frustrating to realize they had known each other for as long as either of them could remember, and they’d been linked for that entire time. Dylan was twenty years old, and had known Mitch for sixteen years, since they were four years old, and they’d been matched since they were six, and then again when they were fifteen and their second tests cleared again.He’s been linked to the same boy for sixteen fucking years, and there was no one in the world who drove him more insane, and no one he’d prefer to have by his side more.It just took him awhile to figure that out.-|-|-|-Or, the fic where Mitch and Dylan are arranged to be married, and Dylan is really not here for it. Also, there's magic, awkward teenagers, and sufficient teenage angst to resurrect MCR from the dead. Also hockey. There's plenty of that.





	hope your heart is strong enough (be your everything)

There wasn’t much on the list of things in this world that Dylan Strome hated, but Mitch Marner topped that list with ease.

The list of things Dylan loved was much longer, but Mitch managed to top that one too.

It was frustrating.

It was even more frustrating to realize they had known each other for as long as either of them could remember, and they’d been linked for that entire time. Dylan was twenty years old, and had known Mitch for sixteen years, since they were four years old, and they’d been matched since they were six, and then again when they were fifteen and their second tests cleared again.

He’s been linked to the same boy for sixteen fucking years, and there was no one in the world who drove him more insane, and no one he’d prefer to have by his side more.

It just took him awhile to figure that out.

**-|-|-|-**

The first real memory Dylan had was of being three years old and hating the sticker Dad had stuck on the back of his hand. He wriggled free of Dad’s grasp and went to explore, but the sticker _itched_. He tried to peel it off, but it refused to budge. He wrinkled his nose at it, frowned, and tried again. It slid off this time, as if it had never been sticky. Pleased, he went wandering again, and found a group of bigger kids playing shinny, and he sat down to watch and play with his shoelaces.

When he got older, he would learn it had been a charmed tracker, and he'd Broken the sticky spell keeping it attached without thinking. Then, though, all Dylan knew was that he got roundly scolded, and the stickers applied between his shoulder blades, where he couldn't pick it off.

From then on, he’d been watched, and then he’d been identified as a Breaker.

Connor had once asked Dylan what it was like to be a Breaker, to naturally draw in the energy around him and absorb it. At the time, Dylan didn’t have an answer. It simply was a part of him. He felt the tangles of magic around him the same way he saw the world, or tasted food. It was a sense he had, a natural reaction the way he always inhaled deeply at the first touch of skates to ice.

As a little kid, he’d accidentally Broken the protection charms the family doctor had laid on him. That had been the second time he’d been recognized as a Breaker, and he’d gotten his first amp, kid-sized and Leafs blue, that week. Another month later, and he was being introduced to Mitch Marner.

Marner had been fun to play with, at the time.  When they played together, Dylan didn’t have to wear his amp; Marner didn’t have to wear his blocker.

He normally didn’t mind the amp; it constantly put out little pulses of magic on unpredictable frequencies, and Dylan naturally countered it, almost without thinking. He knew Marner’s blocker absorbed Marner’s magic output. He knew his parents, also Matched, had bracelet reservoirs: his dad would fill a reservoir up as the Caster, and then his mom would empty it as the Breaker.

Dylan had long since outgrown the Leafs blue amp, long outgrown the childish scribbles and stickers he’d put on it for years. His amp now was a dark grey, patterned something like scales. He had crossed hockey sticks over his pulse point, and his name engraved below that. He rarely took it off, so he had a clearly-marked tan line if he removed it. It was stunningly pale every time he saw it, especially when he took it off for games.

Mitch’s blocker had always been a greyish-silver, for as long as Dylan had known him. Unlike Dylan, he’d never covered his in stickers, but he did have an engraving of vines and trees. Dylan was mostly sure Marn’s blocker had been a hand-me-down from a Caster cousin who’d finalized her Match.

Some of Dylan’s earliest memories were of Mitch. Of course they were--they’d been introduced at five years old, and even then, Dylan had known Mitch was important.

They’d been tested together, though fuck if Dylan remembered any of the testing itself. Everyone with any kind of magical talent knew how the Tests went in general, even if the details were a little foggy. They ran in three parts: ability, personality, and compatibility.

The ability test was the most straightforward, where your magical strength was ranked on a scale of 1-10. Most people ran at an average of about 5, but that didn’t really mean much. Most magic was worked in group spells, or within a coven. Individual power was almost a non-sequitur. What it did mean was that a Match needed to be about the same power level, to help mitigate any damage a pair could wreak. There was no point in matching a P-8 Breaker to a P-3 Caster; there would be no balance between their Match.

As a little kid, Dylan tested as P-6, a little above average but nothing that required special schooling. There were plenty of Casters in his power range and age group; it wasn’t like he was a P-10 Breaker and had to move to wherever there was a P-10 Caster for a Match.

The personality test was, in Dylan’s opinion, what had doomed him to a childhood Match with Mitch Marner. He couldn’t imagine they’d actually passed the compatibility test, but they had been kids, so compatibility wasn’t exactly the biggest concern. But personality-wise, they were both stubborn, both loved hockey as much as breathing, and bled competition and loyalty.

Dylan didn’t remember much about how he and Marns had actually met. At the time, it just seemed like a blue-eyed boy had showed up in his life for playdates and to play on the same mite team. They got along back then, as much as two kids with a herd of brothers surrounding them could.

They were even mostly good memories; back then, Dylan hadn’t had much of a reason to hate Marns. He could remember being little and trying to avoid naptime, and being settled onto the cot next to Mitch’s. Their cots were tucked together in the corner, and Dylan clutched tighter to his blanket as Mitch reached out to play with Dylan’s hair.

It was a good feeling, Mitch’s fingers scratching at his head, almost as good as when Mom did it before bedtime at home. This time, this memory, Dylan could hear Mitch murmuring quietly to himself.

Dylan huffed and rolled over to face Mitch, who looked surprised to see Dylan’s face for once.

“What’re you saying?” Dylan demanded. He pulled his blanket up to his chin and glared at Mitch, as if that would get him any more answers.

Mitch put his hand back out and scratched a little behind Dylan’s hair, where his mom had clipped the sides shorter than normal. “You got a haircut,” he said. “I’m recounting your curls but I keep falling asleep.”

Dylan didn’t remember if that scene was truth or fabrication, but it was a decent memory of Marns.

Too bad that kid had grown up into a total shithead.

Dylan couldn’t quite pinpoint exactly when he’d started to hate Mitch, but he was mostly certain it was around when he was about nine. They’d played mini-mite together before that, but they split up when they hit the 10 and under groups. Dylan went to play with Mikey, and Mitch went to a team closer to his parents’ house.

Their teams still played against each other sometimes, often enough that their parents called them playdates and tried to get the two of them to spend a bit more time with each other before or after them. It was at these games that things began to shift between them.

Dylan was doing lazy loops around Mikey, running his mouth and testing out a two-player block against one of their own Casters. Mitch skated over from his own half of the rink, where he’d been doing his own drills with his team; Dylan was expecting a hug or a high-five, or to bump their amp and blocker together like matching pieces of a set.

Instead, Mitch grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him over.

Dylan found himself sprawled out on the ice in shock. Mitch was giggling, looking at Dylan as if he expected him to laugh along. Across the rink, Mitch’s friends were cackling.

Dylan kept staring at Mitch until Mitch’s giggles faded into nervousness, and then deliberately twisted his feet with Mitch’s to knock _him_ flat on his back.

Mikey helped Dylan up, and Dylan made his escape off the ice before Mitch could see him crying. He threw up in the locker room before the game, so his mom took him home with vague worries about the flu. He was still crying, so Coach had made some awkward comments about a high fever and stress.

By the time Dylan was all cried out, tucked in bed at home with a vomit bucket and an icepack, he had decided he _hated_ Mitch Marner more than anything, and would forever.

**-|-|-|-**

Everyone knew Marner and Strome played their hardest against each other, and they’d definitely try to fight if their parents were looking the other way. By the time they were fifteen and getting ready for the OHL Draft, Dylan had a laundry list of grievances and a longer list of injuries collected from Mitch and repaid with a vengeance.

“It’s good you react so strongly to him,” Dylan’s mom said, after one game where Dylan had pointedly scored twice on Mitch’s ice time. Mitch had retaliated with a goal of his own and an attempt at tripping that had resulted in both of them getting yelled at by refs and coaches alike. That probably had more to do with the pucks Mitch kept shooting at Dylan during warmups, though, so it wasn’t like Dylan didn’t feel at least a little justified. “You know he just wants to get a reaction from you, right?”

“He’s an asshole,” Dylan said, and got his knuckles rapped sharply. “What? He is!”

“He’s a fifteen year old boy,” Mom said. “Haven’t you ever heard of pulling pigtails? He doesn’t know how to tell you he likes you.”

“If he liked me, he’d stop trying to put a puck through my skull.”

Mom shook her head, but she pulled out of the lot. She was a Breaker like he was, and it was normally comfortable being around her. For now, though, Dylan put in his headphones so he wouldn’t have to hear his mom sing Marner’s praises.

**-|-|-|-**

Dylan went to Erie, and became Stromer. Marner went to London, where he became Marns to all and sundry. They played each other often enough, but with everything else going on, Marns was suddenly a much lesser part of Dylan’s life.

Dylan got along with Connor McDavid like a house on fire. Lying across from each other on Dylan’s queen-sized bed at his billet family’s home, they laughed and talked and shot the shit, ostensibly working on homework. They went on double dates together, and then once Dylan had his first serious girlfriend he worked to find Connor a girlfriend who wasn’t put off by the amount of time Dylan and Connor spent together. The chemistry between them was insane, and Dylan wished--not for the first time--that his Match had been something more like this.

Connor was easily the best friend Dylan had ever had. If Connor hadn’t been a Null and entirely straight besides, Dylan would have petitioned his parents for a Match and demanded a compatibility test.

As it was, they became seatmates and linemates and road trip roomies. Connor was the first person Dylan ever told about his Match outside of his family, and the first person he ever told about his hatred of it. Connor was sympathetic, but he didn’t _get_ it.

It was entirely foreign to Connor, how Dylan’s life has always circled back to Mitch.

Second sons weren’t that important in the grand scale of things, so it’s not crucial for the Marners or the Stromes that this Match sticks. They’re a Caster and a Breaker respectively, so the Match provides balance and a foundation for an academic partnership. Besides, a first Match was security, childhood friendship based on similarity of background and interests. It was the second Match, the one made as the matchees entered their twenties. They took compatibility tests when they were fifteen, but the results were sealed. You didn’t marry your first match. You just _didn’t_.

Except.

At sixteen, no moves had been made to dissolve their childhood Match. Dylan’s parents hadn’t even begun to look at other potential Matches, which put Dylan on edge. He really hoped someone got a move on, because he hated Mitch Marner.

“You don’t hate him,” Connor said, skating backwards. Dylan hoped he ran into the boards.

“Definitely do.”

“Do not.” Connor poked at Dylan, then had the nerve to wave at Marner across the rink. Dylan hated whenever the Otters played the Knights, because the Strome clan and the Marner clan all hiked out to see the game. It meant he couldn’t flip Marner off without getting scolded.

“I want him to die in a fire.”

“You do not, I’ve seen you blush furiously on account of his good looks and charm on multiple occasions.”

Dylan glared at Connor. It was easy for him to say: Connor was a Null, and didn’t need a Match. Nulls had the choice to choose their partner, their counterbalance. Breakers, like Dylan, didn’t get that option.

He said so, but by then Coach was calling them in so Connor couldn’t retort.

Dylan and Marner’s lines kept matching up in the game. Dylan knew that because Marner was fucking fast and frustratingly everywhere Dylan turned. Dylan spent half the game breaking whatever charm Marner threw his way, enough that even Connor started to notice how targeted Marner’s charms were. Dylan liked detangling spells, but not like goalies did; with the number of spells Marner was chucking his way, he was starting to wish he had a goalie’s pads.

“What’s up with them?” Brinksy asked Connor. Dylan didn’t really give a shit that they were gossiping, what with how he was watching the London captain argue a call with the ref. He still halfheartedly listened to them, as the argument stopping play didn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. “Stromer and London’s 93, I guess. Marner? Fuck, did Marner sleep with Stromer’s girl?”

“Marns and Stromer don’t like each other,” Brownie said, leaning across Connor to get at his water bottle and nearly elbowing Dylan in the spine in the process, somehow. “Like. Really don’t like each other. They played together in the GTA as kids, or some shit, and used to fight all the time. Don’t think any girlfriends were involved, though.”

“Now they just try to score on each other’s ice time,” Connor said dryly. “Watch--it’s gonna a be a ridiculous game.”

Brinksy started to ask Dylan himself a question, but mercifully, the game resumed and Dylan was back on the ice, back on Connor’s line. Unfortunately, that also meant he was facing off against Marns. _Again_.

Dylan growled at Marner across the dot, checked him hard when he could get away with it. After the game, he left his gloves on and offered a fist bump instead of a handshake. He hid behind Connor; Dylan Strome had never in his life been fully alone with Mitch Marner, and he had absolutely no plans to.

A small group did get together after the game, and Dylan got folded in. There were enough Toronto boys who’d played together as kids, and the community of hockey kids who went into the CHL was only so large. The type of kid who was willing to leave home at sixteen for hockey had a certain kind of temperament, and on the whole, they got along like a house on fire.

Dylan stuck with Connor, mostly, and the other Otters. The Knights had a curfew, so they weren’t exactly going to be burning the midnight oil on this little get-together.

Dylan ended up across from Mitch, because apparently the universe hated him.

Everyone knew Marner and Strome didn’t get along, which meant they got a couple of weird looks when Marns rested his feet in between Dylan’s and casually rattled off both their orders when the server asked.

Marns didn’t push anything else, for which Dylan was kind of grateful. He wasn’t grateful for Connor being a smug bastard, but that was par for the course with Connor.

**-|-|-|-**

Their parents kept prodding at Dylan, pushing him towards Marns. Dylan agreed to hang out with Marns one on one a few times the summer they were sixteen, before the Hockey Challenge. Connor bailed because--well, Connor McDavid had shit to do, apparently--so Dylan got a few winks from his parents and twenty dollars slipped into his pocket, and an afternoon of unmediated time with Mitch fucking Marner. Dylan had just gotten dumped anyways, so it wasn’t like Mitch could really make him feel worse about himself.

Dylan wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t Marns showing up in a battered Knights hoodie and jeans torn through at the knees. They laid out on the trampoline in the backyard. Technically, it was the McLeod’s trampoline, but the McLeod-Strome families had bought four houses on a block and torn down the fences in between them long before Dylan had been born.

Being around Marns was suspiciously easy. They talked, shooting the shit; they had plenty in common now that Dylan wasn’t trying to rip Marns’ throat at every given chance.

Marns fidgeted with his magic and talked with his hands, which didn’t surprise Dylan. His magic sense always felt alive around Marns. It was easy, then, for Dylan to reach out and lay the bare skin of his wrist against the space revealed where Marns’ t-shirt had ridden up. He absorbed the little sparks Marns was throwing off, to which Marns smiled at him.

Dylan settled in, and listened to Marns, and felt himself calm in a way he hadn’t in months.

So maybe being around Marns wasn’t _quite_ that awful.

Marns, Dylan discovered, had a coarse sense of humor, was prone to giggle fits whenever anyone said anything that struck his funny bone, and thoroughly enjoyed pranks. He liked Casting, always willing to soften the pain of a bruise or cast a trip jinx for on-ice drills.

He also put whipped cream in his coffee, which led to a truly excellent prank opportunity the morning of their flight out for the hockey challenge. Marns had spent the night at the Stromes, being that they were both on the same flight out the next morning.

Marns slept like the dead, which Dylan had always vaguely kind of known. It made it easy for Dylan to get up early and shower first, and start the coffeemaker.

“Are you trying to burn his taste buds off with strong coffee?” Matty asked, watching Dylan with suspicion. “Mom only puts two spoons of coffee into the filter.”

“It’s an experiment,” Dylan said, and flipped the lid of the coffee machine shut. “You think she’ll notice?”

“She’s already noticed,” Mom said, coming up behind them. Dylan very manfully didn’t jump out of surprise, but it was a near thing. “I know you’re not drinking coffee, because I know you know you’re not drinking it until you’re done growing.”

“It’s for Mitch,” Dylan said, because a) it was true and b) it made Mom’s eyes go soft around the corners and c) got him some slack when he was fucking around. “And he’s done growing anyways. He’ll be a tiny shorty forever.”

“You don’t know that, he might surprise you,” Mom said, but let Dylan turn the coffee pot on.

From her expression when she poured herself a cup, it was not good coffee. Dylan was pleased with the result and set about making Mitch a cup to go with breakfast. He poured in a dollop of milk and a spoonful of salt from the salt-cellar, and then another for good measure. He topped the whole thing with whipped cream, as if that would disguise the salt and burnt coffee, and went about the rest of breakfast.

Mitch came down to the kitchen a few minutes later anyways, hair damp from a shower and fully dressed. He was yawning as he sat at the table, and looked pleased to see the mug of coffee waiting at his spot.

Dylan kind of hated that Mitch had a designated, regular table spot for when he came over, but that was mostly because it was right next to Dylan and across from Ryan, which meant Dylan got stuck across from Matt, who was prone to kicking his feet as he ate.

Dylan watched when Mitch took a sip of coffee. There was a split second grimace, and then Mitch drained the cup and went to make himself a refill. Dylan was impressed, despite himself.

Mitch rolled his eyes at Dylan as he sat back down with a second cup of bitter, overly strong coffee, but it was a fond kind of smile. Dylan was a little put out by Mitch being so amicable about this, but he also wasn’t all that surprised. This _was_ Marns, after all.

Mom drove them to their airport, bags and all. They went through security together, after checking their massive gear bags and shouldering their carry-on backpacks.

Marns took the window seat; that was okay, since it meant Dylan got the aisle. He was taller, so the extra space for his legs was nice.

“Can I hold your hand at takeoff?” Marns asked, biting his lower lip. “Still, not, uh, not fond of flying.”

Dylan rolled his eyes but let Marns lace his fingers through his own. Mitch’s palm was dry, and his fingers were calloused. Marns squeezed their hands together, but didn’t let go even when they were at cruising altitude.

Dylan found he didn’t mind all that much, even when Mitch dropped his head to Dylan’s shoulder and sighed deeply.

It wasn’t a long flight, but Mitch didn’t let go for a minute of it. Dylan just kind of let him; he figured he owed Mitch one for the salt that morning.

**-|-|-|-**

Dylan probably shouldn't have been surprised, but he and Mitch were assigned roommates once they got to the hotel. They checked in solidly in the middle of the arrival window, and Coach handed them their arrival packets, hurrying off to corral some of the guys who were clearly trying to sneak something the size of an office chair into the elevator.

Dylan probably would have protested the rooming assignments, but the pinched look on Coach’s face made him think of bag skates and the kind of drills that made him regret hockey a little.

Mitch claimed the bed by the door, which was—fine, actually, Dylan always wanted the window bed—but he considered arguing just for the hell of it. By the time he opened his mouth to protest though, Mitch had face-planted onto the bed and Dylan frankly already had more to do with Mitch’s face germs than he really wanted to.

Team Ontario was filled with guys Dylan had played with and against, but the one guy he was most familiar with was Mitch. Familiarity was a little helpful in some of the drills and exercises they did; it was natural for everyone to start pairing off with guys they already knew.

Working out with Mitch wasn’t hard; Dylan was already used to that from summer ball hockey tournaments. They went running together before breakfast at the hotel and reported in for team breakfast still a little sweaty and definitely exhausted.

Dylan called first shower when they were dismissed from Coach’s speech and the remnants of breakfast; Mitch stayed behind to chat with some of the other guys. Dylan scrubbed up quickly--sure, they had practice soon and he’d just get sweaty again, but he didn’t like his clothes to stick to his skin--and got changed into jeans and a Team Ontario hoody. He was whistling when he pushed open the bathroom door, towelling his hair off.

He wasn’t expecting a half-naked Marns when he stepped out of the bathroom.

“Oh, Jesus,” he yelped, instinctively half-leaping back into the bathroom. “Did you start a nudist colony?” He dropped his towel and covered his eyes.

“Didn’t know you were Neutral,” Mitch said. “And stop being a dick, I’m still wearing pants.”

“Barely,” Dylan grumbled, but stepped aside to let Mitch into the bathroom. “Go shower, pigpen.”

“Look who’s talking,” Mitch shot back, and whacked Dylan with his towel.

**-|-|-|-**

“Hey,” Mitch said, dropping into the seat next to Dylan on the bus. His hair was still damp from his shower. “Check this out.”

He held out his hands, and a little shimmery phantom of Burbank wound its way around Mitch’s palm.

“Whoa, you got him down to the wonky tail,” Dylan said, leaning forward to look at the phantom kitty wander around. “How long did that take you to figure out?”

“I looked up a basic spell for it on the internet. Wanna see me do Winston too? I think I got their personalities pretty good.”

“So Burbank is going to spin kick Winston in the face, and Winston’s going to follow him around begging for affection?”

“Probably,” Mitch said, closing his palm and reopening it to reveal two little phantoms, Burbank’s sleek kitty form and Winston’s bulky lab form. “It has to do with sense memory and affection, and energy and shit.”

“Could I hold them, or would it Break them?”

“I hope you can Break them, otherwise we’re going to have little phantom Winston and Burbank here forever.” Mitch put his hands out and transferred Winston to the back of Dylan’s wrist.

It felt like early morning fog in a very concentrated area on his wrist. When Dylan touched it with his fingertips and concentrated, it dissolved.

“I have to think for it to go away,” he said. “Can I hold Burbank?”

“You don’t want Winston again?”

“Burbank’s gonna bite you, probably, but he never bites me.”

Mitch rolled his eyes but transferred the phantom kitty over. Dylan spent the rest of the bus ride delighted at this little ghostly thing that ran over his wrist and burrowed under his hoodie sleeve. He had to Break the little phantoms before they could really get into practice, but Mitch had already promised he’d bring them back any time Dylan wanted.

**-|-|-|-**

Pregame naps were, like, the best thing. Dylan could almost always go for a nap, but a midday one right before a hockey game? Second best feeling in the world, only topped by the sheer joy of winning a close game.

He wasn’t sleeping right now, despite having the exact right positioning of pillows, and his lucky t-shirt blanket from home, and the blackout curtains drawn. Mitch was a quiet sleeper--unlike Davo, who snored louder than anyone Dylan had ever met--so Dylan really should have been able to doze off without any problems.

Dylan really didn't know why this felt so weird. He'd shared a room with Marns before. He'd shared with Marns more nights than he could really count, actually, the two of them in Dylan's childhood bedroom. They'd slept inches apart for chunks of their teenage years, and piled into the same bed for nap as little kids, so what the hell was freaking Dylan out about sharing a hotel room with Marns?

“I can hear you thinking,” Marns mumbled, sounding most of the way to sleep. “Usually you're a log when you're sleeping, stop rolling around over there.”

“Fuck off,” Dylan hissed back into the darkness.

Marns sighed deeply. “Go the fuck to sleep, Dyls. You need a story, or some shit? Count sheep. I'm _tired_.”

“Fuck off, this is weird.”

Across the room, Mitch heaved out a breath and then started rustling around.

Mitch crawled until Dylan's bed, and made himself right at home on Dylan's chest.

Dylan wheezed in surprise. “The fuck? Your ass is heavy, Marns.”

“Shut up and let me sleep.”

Dylan couldn't quite see Marns in the darkness of the room, but he could feel the fine strands of Mitch's hair against his own cheek, and the skin of Mitch's thigh pressed against Dylan's own where their sleep shorts had ridden up.

“So your solution is to smother me to death?”

“You just need a cuddle,” Mitch mumbled, clearly already falling back asleep. “Jus’ close your eyes, Dyls.”

Weirdly, that seemed to be exactly what Dylan needed to fall asleep.

**-|-|-|-**

Dylan probably should have expected it when the tournament started going south against Russia. He probably should have expected it when Coach started throwing plans out the window and seeing what worked.

He watched the play on ice, fingers tingling from the last round of jinxes he’d Broken for his teammates. A particularly strong misdirection hex had whalloped Graham Knott hard between the shoulders, and Dylan had lost track of play while he Broke it on the bench.

Coach barked out a change in lines, and before Dylan could really process, he was on the ice with Marns and Graham. It was a scramble line to try and counter being down three goals, a non-standard forward line without a Null.

Dylan was the only Breaker on the ice at the moment, with a Caster-Null d-pair and a Null Goalie. Somehow, somehow--it was a fucking genius move on Coach Hunt’s part, because it fucking _worked_ , and Marns scored off of Dylan’s assist. Marns was magic on the ice--he scraped out of it with a hat trick, despite their loss.

So, you know, _fuck_ , was Marns going to be insufferable at how well they worked together, but fuck it, they were playing damn good hockey.

**-|-|-|-**

There was a commiseratory party in the goalies’ room after dinner that night, half celebrating Marns’ hat trick and half beating themselves up for losing in the shootout. They had a game the next day, so it wasn’t like anyone really wanted to go too hard, but it was still good company with good players before they went back to the regular season.

Dylan wandered off after a few drinks, because he wanted to call his brothers. Mitch came back as Dylan was just finishing up with Matty, and that meant the call got extended as Matty chattered at Marns.

Dylan wandered out of the room to get a few packets of Skittles from the vending machine down the hall, leaving Mitch behind. He could hear the guys still rallying in the goalies’ room, and he thought he could kind of hear the Russians on the floor above, celebrating their win.

It was one of those eerie moments where he knew he was surrounded by people, by teammates, by friends, knew he could knock on just about any door in this hallway and find someone to commiserate with, but he still felt lonely and exhausted and disappointed in the fact that they couldn't drag out a win. He felt it in his bones as he fed a dollar to the vending machine, and felt dumb at the juxtaposition of wanting to swear at a vending machine at the same time he wanted to scream in exhausted loneliness and frustration.

He pocketed the Skittles and his wallet, and fumbled for the room key. He spent more time in hotels than most seventeen year olds did, he knew, but they still felt uniformly bizarre and isolating. No one ever really belonged in a hotel, Dylan just one among many there only for a handful of nights.

He was too tired to be getting so philosophical, especially when they had a game the next day and his brothers were still on Skype in his hotel room.

It took him a couple of tries for the room key to work. They were always spelled with access charms and Dylan was constantly accidentally Breaking a minor spell or something, especially if he accidentally grabbed Mitch's key. He could never figure out why hotels didn't color code the kind of keys they handed out to Breakers as opposed to the kinds they gave to Casters.

Mitch's conversation  was clearly winding down, so Dylan sat on the bed next to him and tore into his first bag Skittles. He'd save the other for when he inevitably woke up in the middle of the night starving.

Mitch's voice was calming, and everyone seemed to quickly grasp how Dylan wasn't totally all there as they made their way through goodbyes.

“God, you were amazing today,” Mitch said when the screen went dark. “It’s amazing to play with you instead of against you.”

“Yeah?” Dylan said, but he definitely knew what Mitch meant. He chalked it up to Mitch’s infectious mood, the buzz of a few drinks, and the fact that he never wanted to feel quite so miserably alone that he slotted his mouth against Mitch’s.

**-|-|-|-**

So like, Dylan doesn’t admit it, but. Yeah, he totally slept with Mitch at the hockey challenge, and he didn’t hate it.

Which was just another thing for Marns to be insufferable about.

**-|-|-|-**

Dylan and Mitch became friends after that, generally out of the fact that there were only so many times you could play with and against each other without becoming friends. Dylan figured you could become friends with anyone if you were forced into proximity enough. Their personalities meshed well enough that Dylan was sure they could be good friends if their families weren’t trying to force them together and peering around the corner eagerly waiting for Mitch to sweep Dylan off his feet.

Also, like. If you’d drunkenly made out with someone in victory over fifth place in a mostly made-up tournament--or at least kind of smashed your face against theirs--you should probably at least tolerate them. At least, that’s what Travis and Graham seemed to think, and they didn’t even _know_ about the Match.

Dylan decided to pick his battles and let this one ride.

They got home after the hockey challenge and they both went back to their teams. Dylan kind of worried Connor would like, sense the shame on Dylan, or Mitch would mention it to a mutual friend but nothing ever happened. Dylan figured it was going to be one of those things that happened that one time and they never talked about or acknowledged.

It was kind of nice being friends with Mitch, though. They texted and hung out when their schedules overlapped. Mitch just kind of hung around for most of the following summer, through the ball hockey tournament the McLeod brothers put together, and through the rash of house parties Dylan and Mikey attended when their parents left them in the care of Big Matty and Big Ryan.

It was enough to get used to Mitch hanging around, being present with no real purpose.

Dylan wondered if this could make anything easier at all.

Eventually, summer ended and Dylan returned to Erie. Connor greeted him at the airport so they could fly out together, by which Dylan meant Connor ambushed him outside security and completely tackled him to the ground.

Connor interrogated him the whole way to Erie, and then again once their billet families let them out of family meetings and unpacking times.

“So Marns was around a lot this summer,” Connor said. He was sprawled out on the grass outside his billet family's home, pale face tipped to the sky. It had gotten cold in Toronto a week before, but Erie was still holding onto the last few vestiges of summery warmth. “Did I get left out of gossip again?”

“Nah,” Dylan said. “He was just around a lot and I managed not to punch him in his smug little face.”

“You _like_ his smug little face,” Davo said, but dropped it.

**-|-|-|-**

Even if Dylan and Mitch can be civil now, they weren’t what Dylan would call _close_ friends. There’s too much expectation there for friendship to really grow. Dylan could be cordial and put on a smile, and still be fighting this match tooth and nail. It’s not like Marns doesn’t know how Dylan feels about this whole thing.

Matches were going out of style anyways. No one in America cared that Dylan was trying to break his. There were plenty of lines in hockey without matched Breakers and Casters; most Matches were WAGS or HABS anyways.

It wasn’t totally a problem with Marns himself, if Dylan cared to be honest. But mostly he didn’t care to be honest; he cared about good hockey, and making his own fucking decisions.

They got together for lunch before late afternoon games, the two of them splitting off from their groups and getting a moment together. Davo and Dvo were supposed to come along, make their duo a quartet, but Davo had gotten grabbed by Pu and a few other London guys, and Dvo was doing Dvo things, somewhere.

Dylan thumped back into his seat at the diner. Marns had ordered for them, but that was just because Dylan always got the same thing and Marns ribbed him enough about it to know the order by heart.

“So the Draft,” he said. The Draft Lottery order hadn’t yet been done, but Dylan knew they’d both been invited to attend.

Marns perked up. “Oh, yeah! I think it’s, what, Arizona and Boston? That have the double-draft picks this year, and the cap space for a Matched set--”

“Wait, you want to _tell_ them?”

Marns sat back, his coffee spoon clattering to the table. “Uh, yeah? We play amazing together.”

“We’re going to go lower if we get drafted as a set,” Dylan said. “No one actually wants to draft Match pairs from the same year. You know that. I’m not going lower because of you, and you’re not going lower because of me.”

“But--”

“And we’re not a Matched set anyways, so it’d just be a detractor on our scores, right? We’re just pre-Match. They’d know one of us would have to get traded later on. So it’s only more trouble than it’s worth to tell them, especially since our Match is probably going to change. We’re only first match.”

“We tested at eighty percent,” Marns said quietly. “You don’t think that’s worth anything?”

“It’s worth plenty, but I don’t want to fuck up my chances at the Draft.”

“Okay,” Marns said, and pushed his coffee cup away. “Okay.”

“So you agree?”

“I guess. If that’s what you want.”

“It is,” Dylan said, and beamed at Marns. “See? Everything’s going to be great.”

“If you say so.” Marns looked dubious, but then their food came and the conversation turned to ball hockey strategy.

Marns still tucked his feet in between Dylan’s, so he couldn’t have been that pissed. Dylan offered him a few bites of bacon as a peace offering.

**-|-|-|-**

There was a solid month between the Combine and the Draft, which Dylan was planning to spend mostly drunk and pointedly not thinking of all the ways his life was about to change. They really only had three weeks in Toronto, being that the top ten were invited out to Florida a week before the Draft proper, but that time was filled with the annual Strome-McLeod summer gathering. This was the time of year when all the Aunts and grandparents descended upon the Strome-McLeod compound, and the whole family, Matches and all, got to see each other.

Dylan spent a couple of days at Mitch’s house, spending the minimum amount of time he needed to with the Marners to fulfill their Match contract stipulations. There, he had his own guest bedroom and passed the salt politely at the quiet dinner table, being that Chris was moved out and it was really only Mitch and his Null parents.

Mitch kept up his weirdly posessive act, slinging his arm around Dylan’s shoulders and trying to hold his hand, worming his way into Dylan’s lap at the one party they managed to go to.

Dylan didn’t really say anything, because the lines around Mitch’s mom’s eyes were always kind of tight when he was around, and if she wanted to believe her son was in love, he wasn’t going to start another family feud about it.

They were sharing a room when they transferred over to Dylan’s house, anyways. Dylan could talk with Mitch about not being weirdly possessive in public then.

The summer solstice was one of Dylan’s favorite times of year, even though it was traditionally a Caster holiday. It was the time when the majority of the Strome-McLeod clan descended on Mississauga, and the whole family spent a week in each other’s pockets, feeding off of the magic inherent in the solstice.

It did mean Dylan had to share his room with Mitch, but it really could be worse, he supposed. Everyone had to double up, with the amount of people over for the solstice and the annual tournament. There was a simple hierarchical system: Matches together, then roommates were sorted by gender and age. As much as Dylan pushed against it, he got Mitch in his room, and a few of the more removed guys were camping out with Little Matty. Mikey and Nater were crashing together, while Little Ryan was moved in with Big Matt for the week so one of the Aunts and her Caster-Null triad could take over his room.

To be fair, rooming with Marns was probably better than moving out for the Aunts, who always left rooms smelling like incense and lavender, and incense made Dylan sneeze uncontrollably.

Marns dropped his duffel bag by the door of Dylan’s room, and helped him clear out space for the trundle bed. It took them two tries, and an attempted shuffling of Dylan’s laundry basket and desk, but they got the trundle popped up.

They slid the trundle closer to Dylan’s bed so they could access the door, the desk, and the closet, a bare six-inch gap between the two beds.

Dylan tried not to think too hard about the last time they'd actually shared a room. Mitch didn't seem to be worried about it, given the way he was already dumping his shit into one of Dylan's dresser drawers and hauling his usual bedding out of Dylan's closet.

“Come on,” Dylan said once they had sheets stretched out over Mitch’s cot, and Mitch’s bag was stowed underneath Dylan’s bed. “Mom put us on dinner duty for the chore roster, so I hope you’re ready to peel approximately sixty million potatoes.”

Mitch rolled his eyes, knowing full well the scale of dinner prep when the entire McLeod-Strome coven was together. He rolled up his sleeves, though, and they took over two stools at the kitchen table to work through ten kilos of potatoes and a small mountain of other root vegetables.

Mom took a photo of them with her cell phone, Dylan laughing at something Mitch had said. There was a huge pile of peelings in front of them, and the Strome’s dog peeking up over the countertop.

Objectively it wasn’t a bad photo. Dylan had always thought he looked better laughing, but it was his Mom’s knowing smirk and her quiet “well, that’s one for the wedding scrapbook” that made Dylan push his chair away from Mitch’s and focus on cutting turnips and beets into cubes.

Mitch’s smile dimmed a little when Dylan moved, but he kept chattering at the collection of Aunts and Uncles in the kitchen who were also on kitchen duty. They were dismissed once they’d worked through their pile; there wasn’t enough left to do that needed two extra sets of hands, so they escaped out to where the Matts were arguing over how to best draw up the ball hockey tournament scoreboard on the McLeod’s big rolling whiteboard. Little Matt was arguing for a tournament bracket, while Big Matt was insisting on individual player stats. Mikey and Nater were watching in far too much amusement.

“The Ryans took the airport run,” Mikey said, settling back into his lawn chair as little Matt started throwing off sparks he was so worked up. “Or, well--Big Ryan took the airport run and said he’d take one of the littles, and he didn’t want little Matt setting his car on fire when he picked up Aunt Cathy.”

Dylan flopped into the lawn chair Mikey and Nater had left open, and grunted when Mitch shoved his way onto the chair as well.

Big Matt gestured widely, and suddenly clutched at his throat, voice gone. He stomped over to Dylan, who grinned and lifted a hand to touch Big Matt’s throat.

“Voiceless charm?” he asked, and concentrated on draining Little Matt’s spellwork away without touching any of the other charms on Big Matt. Mama McLeod would be pissed if he touched any of her protection charms, or the spell that helped correct Big Matt’s eyesight.

Little Matt wasn’t a delicate Caster, and this was definitely a blunt force spell that left Dylan giddy when he untangled it and gave Big Matt his voice back.

Big Matt immediately used it to read Little Matt the riot act, and then go on a tirade about unfair advantages.

“Feeling okay?” Mitch asked quietly, and Dylan shivered, grinning from the way detangling a good spell always made his day.

“Never better,” Dylan replied cheerfully.

One of their cousins--Camille, by the cloud of peppermint perfume that followed her everywhere--slammed open the garage door maybe twenty minutes later, once the Ryans had returned with an assortment of Aunts. The Aunts had gone inside; the Ryans had started egging on the Matts, whose argument had reached impressive decibels.

“Dinner!” Camille bellowed, and slammed the door shut behind her.

Dinner was a raucous affair: the kids took over two folding tables in the Stromes’ living room, being that there were eighteen of them there. The parents were in the kitchen, while the aunts had mostly taken over the McLeod’s house and were yelling through the open screen doors to converse. Big Ryan and Big Matt kept bitching about being put at the kids’ table rather than the adults’ table, and then had to protect themselves from the cooling charms cast on their plates and other minor hexes from the younger kids at the table.

It was like most McLeod-Strome clan dinners, loud and messy. Since Dylan and Mitch had helped with cooking, they were exempt from dish duty, a fate that the Ryans and cousin Camille did not escape. The Matts collected plates from the table and left the Ryans to load the industrial-sized dishwasher, and the rest of the cousins scattered to collect gear for the first round of road hockey.

They played the first game before the sun set, McLeods vs Stromes, elders vs kids, and boys vs girls, with Matches slotted in where appropriate. The girls played dirtier than the boys, even if technically the Strome-boy-kid team had the most hockey experience.

Dylan had never gotten hit in the face with a banana-cream-pie jinx in an actual hockey game before, so he was going to give cousin Camille either bonus points or a mental penalty for that one, he hadn’t yet decided.

The Strome-boy-kid team took the first win of the tournament, and Mitch tackled Dylan to the grass, cheering in celebration. Big Ryan and Little Matt joined their pile, nearly crushing Dylan at the bottom, but they were laughing too hard for Dylan to really be mad. Matt bounced off to fill in the standings board, Ryan rolling off to follow him.

“Are we staying to watch the first McLeod game?” Mitch asked, rolling over to sprawl beside Dylan in the grass. His leg was still hooked over one of Dylan’s, and he rested his head on Dylan’s shoulder.

“If Aunt Kara puts up a lighting spell, probably,” Dylan said. “You think Mikey’s gonna try to trip Uncle Mo?”

“Pretty sure Mikey’s gonna try to trip everyone,” Mitch said, but he was grinning and made a rude hand gesture at the McLeod boys. Ryan flipped him off in response, and promptly got cuffed on the ear by his mother. They sat through the next game--Aunt Kara did indeed put up a lighting spell, until one of the neighbors came out and asked them to turn the brightness down--and then followed the herd of cousins into the kitchen for ice cream and family gossip. Dylan slouched up towards bed when he started yawning and Mitch, as always, followed suit.

Since everyone else was still downstairs, they got first pick of showers. Dylan was curled in his bed, flicking through his phone, when Mitch came back in his stupid Leafs-logo boxers and a Knights t-shirt about three sizes too big.

Mitch flopped onto his trundle with a deeply content sigh, relaxing into the mattress with the air of the truly exhausted.

Dylan was reminded of when they were little, and their nap cots had been close together. Apparently Marns did too, because he sleepily reached out and tugged at the curls behind Dylan's ear.

“I used to count your curls,” Marns murmured, and wrapped one of the longer strands around his fingers.

“I remember,” Dylan said. He yawned, relaxing into the touch. “Wasn’t ever sure why, but, uh, okay.”

Marns rubbed at the delicate skin behind Dylan’s earlobe, and Dylan sank further into his mattress. The energy Marns always put off felt slower now, warmer, like the steadying pulse of a heartbeat echoing his own.

"Tell me a story," Dylan demanded, quiet and sleepy. "If you're going to be in my room, that's the tax, telling me a story."

"I'm only really good at the one," Marns warned. "I don't know if you'll like it."

"Tell me it anyways," Dylan said. Marns was never any good at telling Dylan no, so he did.

"Long, long ago," he started, never slowing the gentle movement of his fingers through Dylan’s hair. "There were no Casters, or Breakers, only Nulls, just people who wandered through life without lovers or spouses or companions, with no magic to make their lives bright and beautiful. They had no guidance in their lives, and feared each coming day would be their last. The people, in their fear, banded together and pled to their Goddess, if she existed, for some sign that they weren't meant to be alone, that there was magic and faith and love in the world. The Goddess replied to them, with a warning--humans weren't meant to know what a god did. They clamored for it, demanded it from her, and so she gave it.”

Mitch traced over the thin skin where Dylan’s amp usually sat, touching each curve of it with a soft brush of fingers. Dylan shivered from the teasing ticklishness of the touch.

“She spelled out their lives, from start to finish, and gave them names, of the people they were destined to love. She made it permanent underneath their skin, made it live and made it apparent from birth. As another gift, she gave them the gift of magic inside of them, bringing to life the first generation of Casters, who spun magic from their souls and created beauty with their every breath.”

Marns touched at Dylan’s wrist, pressing down on the bluish web of veins that sat under the skin, and dragged his fingertips up the tendons as he spoke. “She started at the beginning, gave them the story of their childhood inked under their skin. It wound through their youth, and into their adolescence, across adulthood and up into eternity. It taught them about their children and their happiness, what branches their lives would take. Nothing was a surprise anymore. They knew what magic they would have, what workings they would make, the courses they would take.”

Dylan sighed, a soft, shuddering breath. He shifted into Marns’ touch.

“People became complacent with their lives written out that way. The world began to stand still, as no one wanted to challenge destiny. No one innovated, or brought change, and the brilliance of the world began to dim. Their magic began to go unused, and Casters began to boil from the inside out as their magic consumed them. Magic, and the stories of their lives, became something to be feared rather than something to be celebrated.”

Mitch’s eyelashes fluttered; Dylan closed his own eyelids and listened.

“Slowly, people became outraged with this gift the god had given, even though they had begged her for it. They petitioned her to take it away, and so she did. She took away their life stories, and began to take away their magic, pulling the power apart from their souls. Some became as they had been, as we know them now as Nulls. But some she took further, and made them into Breakers, taught them how to pull magic into themselves to help those she could not reach on her own. The Breakers are her children, her cure to the overwhelming hurt she imposed on her people. She left her children a hint to their destiny, and told them a Caster would need a Breaker, and a Breaker a Caster. If her children wanted destiny, she told them, they would have to find it on their own, but there would always be someone she created to sit with them, and walk alongside them in all their days.”

Mitch stilled his movements and left his wrist pressed against Dylan’s.

“She watched them for centuries, as the human race became what they had always meant to become before she had interfered. And then, when she was satisfied they would forge forth without her, and she knew that anything else she spoke into existence would only make life harder for the humans, she laid herself to sleep in the stars, and that was how it was for the rest of ever.”

“Do you believe it?” Dylan mumbled, uncurling his fist and pressing his palm to Mitch’s. He’d heard iterations of this story a thousand times, as a child in a coven, but no one ever told it as well as Mitch did.

“The story?” Mitch shrugged. He laced his fingers with Dylan’s. “It’s as good an explanation as any.”

They fell into quiet after that, and soon Mitch’s breath evened out. Dylan stayed away for a little longer, thinking. Eventually, though, he drifted off to sleep with Mitch’s fingers in his hair, and Mitch’s palm cupping his cheek.

**-|-|-|-**

Dylan spent the week leading up to the Draft deciding which member of his Draft Class he wanted to spend time with less, Marns or Jack Eichel. Marns was full-force, extra-Marns at all times, despite the fact that Connor was Dylan’s roommate for the week. Eichs, on the other hand, was channelling his nervousness into mothering everyone else as gruffly as possible.

Dylan would not be surprised to find Eichs ironing everyone’s underwear and bitching about it the whole way, was all he was saying.

Time that while week in Sunrise passed in a weird sort of way. It seemed both like it was dragging on forever until they found out their futures, and like it was scrambling by so fast he could hardly breathe. There was a full schedule of promotion for their little cohort of ten, and their group chat was half reminders and half bitching.

The weirdest part of Dylan's whole Mitch situation was how Mitch kept worming his way into the little fluff interviews Dylan got pulled for. The serious stuff they got pulled for one on one, but the fluff pieces had Mitch’s fingerprints all over them.

“It'd be awesome to get Drafted the same place as Dylan,” Mitch said casually, slinging his arm around Dylan's shoulder. “Look at this face, wouldn't you want to see this every day?”

Behind them, Dylan could practically feel Eich’s suspicious look drilling into his back. He shrugged Mitch's arm off and put on a smile for the camera.

“With any luck we'll end up in the same conference,” he told the camera evenly. “We've been playing each other all our lives, it'd be weird to not kick his ass on the regular.”

Later, Eichs grabbed Dylan and made him walk like twelve blocks to find a Dunkin Donuts.

“I will drink Starbucks over my dead body or if I am traded to Seattle and in no other circumstance,” Eichs had said, grabbing Dylan by the wrist and hauling him away from the air conditioned Starbucks right across the street from their hotel.

“There’s no Seattle team,” Dylan protested. “And what if I wanted a frappuccino?”

Eichs just gave him a dirty look and kept following his phone GPS.

They had three hours free, or at least Dylan did. Their schedule allotted them this bit of free time to talk with family, but Dylan’s family had a delayed flight and were getting in after dinner. Eichs had been muttering darkly about his sister jinxing his luck, so Dylan figured that was why Jack wasn’t hanging around with his family.

“So what the fuck is up with you and Marns?” Eichs asked, a block and a half into their walk. Late afternoon in Florida was muggy and sticky; Dylan idly wondered what he’d do if the Lightning or the Panthers got his rights.

“What?” Dylan asked, as if he hadn’t noticed anything weird about Mitch’s behavior.

“He keeps following you and McDavid around. You know, your little boyband thing.”

“Aww, you think we’re cute enough be a boyband?”

Eichs shoved at Dylan’s shoulder. “Fuck you, man, you know what I meant. You Canadians are all weird as hell.”

“Maybe it’s just because you’re Null.”

“McDavid is Null, and he’s not trying to get into your pants, Stromer.”

Dylan spluttered.

Eichs just looked unapologetic. “What, that's not news to you. Like, I was in the NCAA and _I've_ heard how weird you two are.”

“Competition research?”

“On McDavid mostly, don’t flatter yourself too much.” Eichs unexpectedly turned them down a side street and kept walking. Dylan jogged a little to catch up. “But I mean, first you two practically turn into different people when you're playing each other, and now Marns is wishing you could get Drafted together? Kinda weird, dude, but I thought maybe you were fucking on the DL and he was more into you than you were into him.”

Dylan choked a little.

That stopped Eichs in his tracks. “Oh, shit man, did you not know?”

And, well, Dylan didn't have an answer for that, really. Eichs slung an arm over Dylan's shoulder, as sticky and sweaty and gross as they were in the Florida weather, and brought him in for a hug.

It's kind of awkward, but the thought was sweet. Once Eichs let go, he changed the topic, but Dylan had the vague feeling he'd been adopted by the Americans as of that moment.

**-|-|-|-**

The next three days went much the same: Mitch wormed his way into most of Dylan's media, and Dylan tried to diffuse it without punching Mitch in the face. Usually he went and hid with Connor or Eichs, both of whom were very definitely trying not to freak out over going first or second.

The night before the Draft itself, they congregated in the room Eichs and Hanny were sharing and got kind of drunk to kill the nerves. Not too drunk, because there were ten of them and they were limited to what Eichs’ older sister had been willing to smuggle them (which wasn't much) and Dylan wasn't the only one with stress dreams about tripping off the stage at the Draft.

It tumbled into a game of Never Have I Ever soon enough, which didn't surprise Dylan. They were as gossipy a group of teenage boys he'd ever met.

Mostly it was little things, the sort of game Dylan had played with the Otters. Of course, it didn't stay lighthearted for long.

“Never have I ever...had sex outside of my Match,” Werenski said, grinning widely. He took a sip, to which he was elbowed sharply by Eichs.

“Way to leave out the Nulls,” Eichs bitched.

Dylan rolled his eyes and took his own sip. Across the circle, Mitch abruptly got up and left.

“What’s up with him?” Hanny asked, looking like he both deeply wanted to know and simultaneously appear totally disinterested.

“I’ll go check on him,” Connor offered. “I’m going to get knocked out in a minute anyways. Keep playing.”

“Down two players is just unfair to the rest of us,” Eichs bitched, but he had an arm thrown over Hanny and his legs over Dylan’s lap, so he wasn’t really all that pissed. Eichs, Dylan had discovered, enjoyed bitching more than just about anything else.

Connor and Marns never came back, but the rest of them were perfectly happy to drink away their nerves for the next day.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Connor said, when he finally came into the room late that night. “Because--yeah. I think Marns is more fragile than you think he is.”

“Fragile about what?” Dylan asked, then rolled his eyes. “Fuck. No, I know exactly what you mean. Does it matter?”

“Maybe.” Connor swung his legs up onto Dylan’s bed and drew him into a cuddle. Dylan was--still a little drunk, honestly, but not so much he’d be bleary through the Draft tomorrow. He had no desire to be hungover around his clan, especially since the Aunts could spot a hangover a mile away and had no compunctions about exacting punishment at shrill volume. “Tomorrow's gonna matter to both of you as a unit, even if you’re planning to ignore it.”

**-|-|-|-**

When they were drafted, they were drafted apart, because they were Matched but not married. The teams that draft them didn’t know about the Match because they weren’t legally required to disclose that and Dylan threatened to shred Marns with his skate blades if he mentioned it. They weren’t a married, Matched set, not now, and hopefully not ever. Dylan wasn’t going to be the Breaker to Marns’ Caster, so it didn’t matter where they’re drafted.

Dylan went higher than Marns which was something hopeful. If all went to plan, Dylan would have seniority, and then Marns would either have to come to Arizona, or he’d have to give up on the Match. Either way, Marns would have no leverage over Dylan, and that was something Dylan was wholeheartedly behind.

**-|-|-|-**

The first time Dylan talked to Marns after the Draft was so they could plan their flights out together for the Rookie Showcase. Technically they’d planned to meet up for lunch with their moms--Dylan was never going to turn down lunch out without his brothers, honestly--but the Marners had a family emergency and Marns’ mom was out in Quebec, seeing to Grandma Marner. They ended up talking on the phone, with Dylan’s mom having purchased their plane tickets and already made the rest of the arrangements, and leaving Dylan to relay everything to Marns.

As seemed to happen with every conversation Dylan had these days, they inevitably ended up talking about the future. Like the rest of their Draft class, Marns was willing to talk at length about his plans for once he actually made the show, though just about everyone knew they were all probably going to have at least another year in juniors, with the exception of Connor and Jack, and maybe Hanny, if he gave up his college eligibility. The Coyotes and the Leafs were bad off enough that they could afford the extra development time, and not so terrible that they needed rookie saviours, like Edmonton and Buffalo.

Marns was a chatterbox, as always, and Dylan listened to him ramble on about the future. It was apparent, in every word Marns said, that his his vision of the future was far different from Dylan’s.

Dylan waited for a break in Mitch’s monologue about the relative merits of a house in the suburbs versus a downtown apartment for them to share during the summers before he cut in.

“I want you to repudiate the Match,” Dylan said, and was met by the click of the Marner family landline being hung up.

He started at his phone, and then redialled.

Marns answered on the first ring. “Hi, sorry, phone issue. You want me to _what_?”

“Repudiate the Match,” Dylan repeated. Marns made a strangled noise. “If we both agree we don’t suit, there’s no penalty for either of us, and you can stay in Toronto and I can stay in Arizona.”

“We’re probably both getting sent back to the O anyways,” Marns grumbled. “But--why would I want to? Why would you want to? We’re great together.”

“Yeah, but--one of us would have to be traded, when we get to the NHL. It’s just easier if we don’t Match with each other.”

Marns was quiet a minute. Dylan let him think.

“Is that why you didn’t want to tell them we were pre-Match at the Combine?”

“A little,” Dylan admitted. “Come on, Marns. Will you?”

“I can’t,” Marns said, and exhaled. “No, I’m sorry, but I--I _can’t_.”

“You can’t, or you _won’t_?”

“Both. Either. I don’t know, I just--I can’t, Dylan. Ask me for anything else.”

Dylan held still, then sighed heavily. Then he hung up the phone.

**-|-|-|-**

Dylan objectively knew Marns could get sharp-edged when chirping someone. Technically, he supposed he knew how calculated Marns got when he was taking aim at an opponent; he’d heard plenty of jabs against their opponents, his teammates, their childhood friends. He’d played with Marns in the Hockey Challenge, and during summer ball hockey tournaments. He’d heard Marns snarl out a chirp in frustration.

He’d just never had those chirps directed at himself before, and it was shocking the first time Marns stopped pulling his punches on Dylan. Mitch definitely had the background knowledge on Dylan to make his chirps dig deep every time he opened his mouth, and it wasn’t like Dylan was just going to stand there and take it. So, he gave as good as he got in return.

Some of the snipes got really, really personal.

The guys left over on the Otters from the previous year definitely noticed the difference between the way Dylan and Marns approached each other this year as opposed to the year before. As captain, though, Dylan put a fine on asking him questions about it, and let them come to their own gossipy conclusions. From the conversational snippets he heard on the bench, they seemed to assume it had been a fuck and dump situation at the Draft, though no one could figure out who exactly had done the dumping. Dylan decided to let that ride; it was better than letting them think the truth, which was that Marns was as good as Dylan’s fiance.

Dylan’s family was not pleased at this turn of events, which meant they twice found themselves awkwardly sat next to each other at family dinners or coven outings. Once, Dylan showed up to lunch with his dad and found only Mitch there. It was the fact that he could practically feel his dad’s itch-jinx on the back of his neck that made him sit down.

That meeting went about as well as Dylan had expected, which was to say it went about as well as the time Dylan had gotten tangled up in an opponent's’ glitter jinx and hadn’t managed to get the shimmer off of his skin for nearly a month.

He stared at his water glass, anything to avoid eye contact. “So.”

Mitch scowled. “Fuck.”

“I wrote up a thing,” Mitch said. He held out an envelope. “Declaration of Match Intention and Trade Rights.”

“Why the hell would you fill _that_ out?”

“So we can play together,” Mitch said as if it were obvious. “Me to Arizona, you to Toronto, whatever team offers is the best Match offer. You just have to sign the forms--”

Dylan wasn't proud of it, but he definitely took a swing at Mitch. Marns was quick and ducked out of the way. The envelope fluttered to the ground.

“No,” Dylan said, shaking. “Get the fuck away from me, and stay the fuck out of my life.”

“What's so wrong with me that you want to be in the other side of a continent?” Mitch demanded.

Dylan snorted. He knew Mitch knew how their situations looked, where their teams stood. He knew how Mitch was playing. And given how Dylan was playing right now, and how much money Toronto had...Dylan would get dragged away from the one thing that’s been his and his alone, all because Mitch wanted a spouse.

“What the fuck is wrong with you that you don’t get that _I don’t want you_ ,” Dylan spat back.

“Why don’t I just tell them, then,” Mitch spat. “Then you don’t have to worry about anyone finding out, because they’ll already know.’

Dylan put his cup down, pushing back from the table.

“Yeah, no,” he said, and left Mitch behind there.

Dylan didn’t speak to Marns for another four months, to which the first words spoken were “you fucking asshole, did you just fucking trip me? _Fuck_.”

It wasn’t in-game, weirdly enough. Dylan had started thinking of Mitch only as a rival on ice, rather than as a person he knew anywhere else.

Mitch didn’t dignify Dylan’s question with a response, which. Fair. Dylan wouldn’t have replied either.

They’re both returned to the O. Connor wasn’t, but he’s Connor. No one was really surprised.

Dylan got the C for Erie, which was nice. Connor texted him updates when he could, tips for handling captain shit. Marns got the C for London, which was less nice. They didn’t talk if they could avoid it. The season went, as Erie stacked up wins and drove themselves towards a playoffs spot.

When they met up on the ice, as players setting up for a faceoff, Mitch’s grin was anything but nice. It was toothy and vicious, and even Brinsky--who was facing off against Mitch--seemed a little nervous.

So, like. Dylan’s not proud of it, but he definitely tried to fight Mitch, and it didn’t go well for either of them.

**-|-|-|-**

Ryan, when he came to visit--Erie was a two hour drive from Buffalo, and Ryan had a day off scheduled after an away game--didn’t try to talk to Dylan about it. Instead, he pulled Dylan out to the backyard and shot street hockey balls off the fence.

Dylan’s billet family was pretty good about the fence, actually. As long as Dylan broke a couple of minor jinxes cast by their little three year old Caster, his billet mom was willing to charm the dents out of the fence. They were an American family who didn’t hold with traditional Matches; his billet mom technically had a Match, but they just got together for coffee whenever their magic demanded it. She’d married her high school sweetheart, and they had five children of their own--four Nulls and the one Caster baby.

Ryan was a Null, and had never dealt with a Match, much less the politics involved, but he did know Dylan when he was heartbroken. They kept it fairly lighthearted, Ryan not talking about the Islanders’ recent string of losses and Dylan not talking about how much it hurt to be back in Erie.

Ryan did get one good shot in, though.

“I don’t think you realize how much Mitch is a part of your life,” he said, when Dylan was halfway through chugging a Gatorade, leaning on his stick and considering the best way to go about collecting the street hockey balls. “The two of you--he’s been there every summer, every major tournament. When was the last time you went a week without talking to him?”

Dylan paused. “What are you trying to say?”

“Mom is really worried,” Ryan said, and opened his own Gatorade. “But when isn’t she?”

“Your point?”

“I think you’re being kind of harsh on Mitchy.”

“Not you too,” Dylan whined, and went to gather the orange street hockey balls.

**-|-|-|-**

Dylan mostly loved being home. Spending nine months of the year in Erie with a billet family did that; generally he wasn’t around them enough to remember the shitty parts of being home.

Dylan was 19 now; even if Match marriages traditionally went through at 23, he still had to start putting up with family musings about marriage and wedding themes.

He did get a grace period upon returning home, then, especially because Mitch won where Dylan didn't. Of course, nothing could ever stay that simple.

**[HOUSE OF STROME]**

**MATTY** (23:46 pm)  
Can 1 of u come get me

 **DYLAN** (23:46 pm)  
U ok??

 **RYAN** (23:47 pm)  
What happened??

 **MATTY** (23:48 pm)  
Remember how i told mom little ryan and i were gonna go see the midnight showing of rocky horror at the community theatre

 **DYLAN** (23:48 pm)  
And we all laughed at u? Yes i remember

 **MATTY** (23:49 pm)  
What if i told you i didn’t do that and instead went to a party with little ryan

 **MATTY** (23:49 pm)  
And remember how you said i could text you and you’d come get me if i didn’t feel safe

 **MATTY** (23:50 pm)  
Well, uh, me and ryan don’t feel safe and would like to come home now please

 **DYLAN** (23:50 pm)  
Where are you

 **MATTY** (23:51 pm)  
So about that

 **MATTY** (23:51 pm)  
Richmond hill

 **RYAN** (23:51 pm)  
The fuck are you doing all the way out there

 **MATTY** (23:52 pm)  
Some of the guys knew a guy who was throwing the party so we just like went?

 **MATTY** (23:54 pm)  
I'm sorry!!!!!

 **RYAN** (23:54 pm)  
Don't be Dylan is definitely dumber

 **DYLAN** (23:55 pm)  
dick

 **DYLAN** (23:55 pm)  
Matty, we will...figure something out don't panic

 **RYAN** (23:56 pm)  
also don't get in a car with a drunk driver

 **RYAN** (23:56 pm)  
I will personally murder you

 **MATTY** (23:56 pm)  
Is mom gonna be mad

 **DYLAN** (23:56 pm)  
Mom is not gonna know

Ryan slipped into Dylan’s room.

“So, I have a plan you’re going to hate,” he said, and Dylan gritted his teeth in response. “Mitch lives in Thornhill. He could get Matty and baby Ry, and I’ll distract Mom when they get in, so you can get Matty into bed, no worries.”

“So then, we’ll explain Mitch being here...how?”

“You know she always wants you two to spend more time together. Matty sneaking in late would be a fucking problem, but Mitchy sneaking in to try and see you? She’d never say anything about it.”

Dylan groaned. “Are you _serious_?”

Ryan shrugged. “Worst case Mitch says no, and I’ll go get him, and we’ll make an excuse with mom. But it’d still be like an hour minimum before I got to Matty and baby Ry. Marns is right there.”

“You’re an asshole, but fine.”

Dylan could feel Ryan watching him as he retrieved his phone from the mess of sheets on his bed, and tapped out a quick text to Marns.

 **DYLAN** (00:02 am)  
Need a favor

 **MARNS** (00:03 am)  
Anything

 **DYLAN** (00:03 am)  
Matty’s at a house party in richmond hill nd needs a pickup

 **MARNS** (00:04 am)  
Mama strome doesn’t know?

 **DYLAN** (00:04 am)  
Can’t know

 **DYLAN** (00:04 am)  
none of us can get out there without mom noticing

 **MARNS** (00:05 am)  
Get me the address and i’ll get him

 **MARNS** (00:05 am)  
Little ry too probs right?

 **DYLAN** (00:05 am)  
Yeah

 **DYLAN** (00:05 am)  
I owe you one

 **MARNS** (00:07 am)  
Stop being pissed at me for the memmer and we’ll call it even

 **MARNS** (00:07 am)  
have my keys, heading for richmond hill, get me the address asap

Dylan flicked to the Strome brothers chat and shot off a message asking for Matty’s location, and told him Marns would be collecting him.

Ryan was smirking when Dylan finally looked up from his phone.

“You’re an asshole,” Dylan said.

“Yeah, well, I’ve got to convince Mom I have a fever and a stomach bug, so I think you can put up with Marns doing you a solid.”

**-|-|-|-**

Marns texted Dylan when he was outside, almost an hour later. Mikey and Nater were making noise over at the McLeod house to let little Ryan sneak in.

Dylan’s Ryan had successfully drawn Mom away from the living room TV by complaining of a bad headache and rolling nausea. Dylan went downstairs to let Marns and Matty in.

Marns was in a Knights hoodie and battered sweatpants advertising Canada Hockey, with ridiculous yellow flip-flops. Matty had his head on Marns’ shoulder, slumping to be more of an equal height.

“He’s a little drunk,” Marns whispered, then glanced at Matty again. “Okay--he was more than a little drunk, but mostly it was that baby Ry threw up on him, and that’d be hard to explain to your mom.”

“Big Ryan’s faking a stomach bug. We’ll blame the vomit on that, if we have to.”

Dylan shuffled aside to let Marns and Matty in, and able to get them both up the stairs before they drew his mom’s attention.

“Dylan?” Mom called, and he could hear her crossing Ryan’s room to check the hallway. He shoved Matty into his room, but Marns was still in the hallway. “Are you okay? Ryan isn’t feeling--oh, Mitchy honey, what are you doing here?”

“I couldn’t sleep and I wanted to see Dylan, and I thought I could surprise him. I didn’t mean to--I’ll head home now.”

“Nonsense,” Mom said. “I wish you’d have warned us--or told us he was coming, _Dylan_ \--but now that you’re here, you should spend the night. It’s too late for you to be out driving. I can’t imagine what possessed you to drive this late in the first place--Dylan, pull your trundle out, I’ll bring clean sheets--Mitchy, dear, did you bring a change of clothes--well I’m sure one of the boys has something that will fit you--

It took a few minutes, and Mom producing a puke bucket for Ryan and taking Matty’s temperature, but Dylan and Mitch were left alone in Dylan’s room to make up Mitch’s bed and set up for a sleepover.

“You’re okay?” Marns asked, fiddling with the latch on the pop-up trundle.

“With you crashing here? I have to be, or else Mom’s gonna put me in a tent in the yard,” Dylan said, and chucked the set of sheets at Marns. “Hope you know how to put sheets on, or else Mom’s gonna yell.”

“With the cup,” Marns said. Dylan stopped short.

“You know, it sucks enough that you’re here, but you’ve somehow managed to bring up the one topic I’d really rather not talk about.”

“You’d rather talk about Matty?”

Dylan dropped the sheets on the bed, and headed for the door, leaving Marns behind.

It was Nater who came and found him, shooting pucks at the old oak tree in the backyard. It was the only thing he could wreck without getting shouted at. The only light was from the garage and the porch light. It was kind of hard to see, but it was an instinct training challenge, or whatever.

“Marns being a dumbass?” Nate asked. He had the big flashlight with him, the one that ran on like eight giant batteries and had side panels that slid to make it a lantern.

Dylan snorted, and dragged another puck closer with his stick. When he shot it, it struck neatly into the lowest branch of the tree.

Nater folded himself to sit on the ground and watched as Dylan kept working his way through the bucket of pucks.

Sometimes Dylan thought Mikey had gotten the better deal when it came to Matches. Nater was steady, and had never been a total dumbass that Dylan knew of. Of course, Nater was a secondary Match, strung together when Mikey had been drafted to the Steelheads. There was still room for Mikey and Nater to learn each other, to determine if they’d be a platonic or romantic Match, or if they’d grow apart and fall into tertiary Matches as adults.

Nater helped Dylan scoop up the pucks when the bucket was finally empty.

“Still don’t want to talk about it?” he asked, pulling down a puck that had stuck in the lower branches of the oak. “Little Matty thinks you’re pissed at him.”

“Little Matty was a dumbass, but it’s Marns I’m pissed at.”

Nater shrugged. “It goes that way with Matches sometimes. You think I don’t want to tear Mikey’s head off sometimes?”

Dylan had wished, for a few years, that Mikey had been a Caster. Then they could have been childhood Matches, and he’d never have been in this mess. Unfortunately--or fortunately, if he considered that it had brought Nater into their clan--it hadn’t worked out like that.

“You actually like him most of the time, though,” Dylan said, and dumped an armful of pucks back into the bucket. “And he’s not a total asshole like Marns is.”

“Arguable,” Nater said lightly. “You want me to fuck off, or you want to bitch at me for awhile?”

“Is this a distraction technique so Mikey can yell at Marns?”

Nater grinned. “How’d you guess?”

“The fact that it was you who came and talked to me, and not Big Matt, or Big Ryan.”

“It’s still ridiculous that your clan has two Matts and two Ryans,” Nater grumbled.

“Two Michaels, if you count Grandpapa McLeod,” Dylan added cheerfully. “Two Cousin Susans. Three Auntie Sarahs. We are not original when it comes to names around here.”

Nate dumped the last handful of pucks into the pail.

“You know,” Nater said carefully. “My parents are both Nulls.”

“Yeah, you said.” Dylan straightened up and went for his stick. Nate stopped him with a hand on his wrist, big and hockey calloused.

“I want you to understand: I didn’t have a clan growing up. I didn’t have aunties and uncles and family tradition to teach me as a Caster. My parents didn’t know what to do about my magic, and it was meeting Mikey and your clan that I started to feel like I belonged. It kind of felt like I had to hold on to Mikey to be able to stay.”

“That’s not how clans work,” Dylan said, frowning. “Unless you disavowed us, or cast counter to our Clan Laws, we’d keep you, or help you find a new clan. Even without Mikey.”

Nate shook his head, but let go of Dylan’s wrist. “I think you forget sometimes how similar Mitch and I are.”

“Meaning?”

“He grew up alone, seeing things no one else in his family saw, and then he had you. Of course he gets protective, possessive, whatever. You were the first thing he ever had that meant he could belong.”

Dylan sighed. “Yeah, but—our Match contract stipulates that I would join his clan. We’d have to start our own clan. And I don’t think I could do that without murdering him.”

Nater dropped a puck for Dylan to shoot. “We’d come with you.”

“You and Mikey?”

“Who else? Yeah. Even if we end up being platonic. We’d come with you. Clans splinter sometimes.”

“Only if we’re all in the same place, though,” Dylan pointed out, voicing the argument that had been whirling in his head for months. “Me in Arizona, Marns in Toronto, the two of you in Jersey--how the fuck would we make that Clan work?”

“Wait until retirement?”

Dylan snorted as Nater dropped another puck, the rubber bouncing before Dylan knocked it into position. “Yeah. Or Marns plays the card he’s been threatening to for months and I get shuffled back out to Toronto, and then we’re in the same league, and Marns wins.”

“Maybe don’t think of it as winning or losing.”

“How else could I possibly think of it?” Dylan asked, and shot the puck as hard as he could.

Nater didn’t seem to have an answer, but he did set down another puck. Dylan hit it with satisfaction.

**-|-|-|-**

Mikey was one of Dylan’s favorite people. Dylan loved his brothers, but they were his brothers, and sometimes he hated being around them. Mikey’s Ryan and Matt were good guys too, but they tended to drift over to spend time with Dylan’s Matt and Ryan, respectively. Mikey, on the other hand, was the closest to Dylan in age, and a Breaker too, and Dylan loved being around him.

Whenever Mikey came up with a good idea--a really good one, one of the bright flashes of personal insight that Mikey always fucking had--Dylan couldn’t help but agree they were amazing ideas. Mikey suggested heading out for the weekend to Bruce Peninsula. It was a slow day, and there were few people unwilling to take the three hour drive out to Bruce. It only took Dylan and Mikey’s combined puppy eyes to convince their moms that this could be a fun weekend activity. Dylan tried not to put too much stock in the way his mom’s eyes softened when Dylan brought up that Mitch’s family enjoyed camping for major holidays.

Big Matt--Mikey’s Matt--chose to take his car, and the whole set of Ryans and Matts decided to go together, not that anyone else wanted to cram into the car with them. Big Ryan’s girlfriend went with them, and that was that car full. Dylan, freshly licensed, offered to take the truck, so they gathered up Mitch and Mikey and Nater, and Little Matt and Little Ryan’s Matches, and took off for the beach.

Mitch opted to sit in the cab, while the others piled into the back of the truck, their laughter too faint to be heard from the insular world of the pickup’s cab. It was oddly pleasant to drive with Mitch, Dylan shifting through gears and Mitch singing along to the radio, keeping a running commentary with every landmark they passed and every mile they got further from Toronto.

“You doing better?” Mitch asked. “And--I’m sorry about earlier. I was a dick.”

“You do that sometimes,” Dylan said.

Jacob Chychrun called when they were halfway to the campground, telling them he’d collected Connor out of Richmond Hill, and were on their way to collect Brownie and Finner from Etobicoke, and they’d meet them out in Bruce Peninsula. Mitch relayed the information to Dylan and texted the info over to the Little Matt in the other car. Task done, he turned up the the radio, the wind ruffling through his hair and beating at his skin where his sunglasses didn’t cover.

Dylan felt his tension ease and he grinned at Mitch over the gearshift, the windows rolled down and Mitch’s choice of a country music station blaring something Dylan didn’t quite recognize. If it hadn’t been for their friends in the back, Dylan might have classified this as something like a date, and as it was there was something about singing along loudly and off-key with the windows down and the wind whipping through their hair.

They took the highway north and raced the Matts for a good twenty miles; they merged onto the north-westerly road they needed to take to get to the Peninsula. It was a three and a half hour drive, but it felt like barely minutes until they were piling out at the campground, splintering into groups to unload and setup the campsite.

Big Matt and Big Ryan set to starting up the bonfire while Little Matt and Little Ryan set off with their Matches to find logs to drag over for benches. Dylan and Nater started trying to put together tents, leaving Mikey and Mitch to stand around and heckle everyone without being much use.

Somehow, by the time everyone else showed up, they’d gotten a reasonably good fire going and the afternoon sun was still burning hot enough that no one wanted to hang around. Most of them stripped down to their underwear and dove into the lake, and started the greatest chicken-fight battle of all time.

Mitch grinned at Dylan, and pushed at his shoulders. Dylan was happy enough to ducked under water, and suddenly Mitch was in the air, splashing water at Brownie and Finner, who were losing by merit of poor reflex time. They were, of course, knocked over by Mikey and Nater, who refused to lose anything water-related.

After the battle, Dylan floated on his back, and Mitch floated next to him, drifting in and out of that hazy state of timeless consciousness. Dylan laced his fingers through Mitch’s so they didn’t float away from each other in the giant expanse of the lake.

“Otters hold hands so they don’t float away?” Mitch teased.

They retreated from the water when Dylan’s toes started to prune and the sky started to cloud just a little bit. The bonfire was flared up bright and beautiful, and someone had gone to a nearby store and gotten hotdogs and marshmallows to cook on long sticks, along with a couple truly massive cases of beer. The older members of the McLeod-Strome clan had arrived sometime while the younger members were in the water, and there was a pretty good picnic spread set out. It was easy to like having Mitch around when he was busy stuffing his face with Aunt Marie-Philip’s brownies and toasting marshmallows.

Kara, Little Matt’s Match, had brought an ancient old stereo that ran on giant double-D batteries, and the only station it picked up was a fifties and sixties throwback station out of some tiny suburb, staticky but loud enough. Mitch was always full of energy, so Dylan watched him dance barefooted in the sand. Dylan himself tipped his head back and laughed, long and happy, appreciating how the smoke curled off the bonfire. It was easy to like being around Mitch when their world was a campfire and the coven, instead of hockey and cities way the fuck apart.

Before he knew it, he was being dragged up from his seat by Mitch, who pulled him into a dance, despite the fact that Dylan was a clumsy dancer. Most of the guys had headed back to Toronto by this point; it was the Strome-McLeod Clan that was left at the beach.

The weather was good enough that Dylan was willing to sleep out in the open, in sleeping bags on an air mattress that barely fit in the bed of the truck. After they inflated it, Dylan collapsed into its softness, nestling in among the blankets and towels they’d brought with them. He felt gritty with sand and a little tipsy, but it was a bright, light way of feeling.

Mitch crawled into Dylan’s lap, the two of them in the bed of the truck with their inflatable mattress and rested his head on Dylan’s shoulder. “Hi.”

“Can I help you?”

“You’re sad,” Mitch said plainly. “I don’t want you to be sad.”

Mitch was warm against the cool night air. Across the campsite, little Matty was shouting about starting a fire hockey match. Mikey and Nater were making for the spar sticks stacked by the McLeod’s massive eight-person tent.

“Are you drunk?” Dylan asked, a little dubiously. His dad was notoriously ferocious about his protection charms when there was even a change of alcohol and magic mixing, but then again almost everyone was charmed by Mitch.

“Just happy to be here.”

They fell into quiet, watching the other boys hurtle across the campsite, as their parents settled down by the fire, as Mikey and Nater started up a spar demonstration with their sticks moving with quick precision. They were good at it, too, bodies moving against each other and their sticks clacking rhythmically. Dylan kind of zoned out a little watching the flashes of movement.

“What’re they doing?” Mitch asked.

Dylan startled. “Oh. Uh, sparring.”

“They’re going to fight?”

“No, they’re sparring.”

Marns blinked, his eyelashes tickling up against Dylan’s neck. “You’re going to have to break that down for me.”

Dylan pointed. “See how they’re not actually making impact?”

“Yeah?”

“You lose if either partner makes contact with their spar stick. The idea is that you should know your Match’s movements well enough you can predict what they’re going to do while simultaneously pulling your own hits so you don’t hurt them.”

“How come we’ve never done it?”

Dylan snorted. “I don’t think I could resist breaking your hand,” he said, feeling like Mitch would appreciate his honesty. “Besides, Nater and Mikey did this as their getting-to-know-you activity, and we’ve known each other forever.”

“I dunno,” Marns said, and let his entire weight sag into Dylan. “I feel like there's always more we could learn.”

**-|-|-|-**

Dylan started thinking that if Mitch started pressing this, he’d have to go along with it.

Mitch threatened to reveal their Match before, and that’s always kind of in the back of Dylan’s mind, that Mitch--no matter that he was a teenager who was dumb and hurting and not really sure what he could actually do and what he would actually do--would be willing to essentially ruin Dylan’s life to get what he wanted.

On the other hand, there was the Mitch Dylan knew from every summer family gathering, his friend and teammate. Dylan was stuck in between wanting and not wanting.

His family didn’t help.

23 was the traditional age for Match marriages. Dylan was 20 now, enveloped within the world of the AHL. His mom worried enough that Dylan stopped answering her calls, instead choosing to text her back later.

He hadn’t talked to Marns in two months, and even then, Connor had been there along with half the McLeods. Technically he supposed he should have called when Marns got called up to the NHL and stuck, but Dylan hadn’t exactly been in a charitable mood; he’d gotten sent back to the O after only a handful of games and no goals.

It fucking sucked. It really, really fucking sucked. He tried not to be pissed about it, but it was starting to distinctly feel like he wasn’t good enough. He did get the C again, which was the shittiest consolation prize.

He got it. Sometimes development took a little longer; Ryan took _years_ for the Islanders to make him a roster staple. Going directly into the show wasn’t common, and it wasn’t like the Coyotes were the best team in the world. They could develop him longer, get him a longer career.

It still stung, watching his best friend and his Match and the rest of his draft class start to go places, start to make waves. Eichs and Davo were tearing it up in leadership roles; Marns and Hanny were settling in nicely, and Dylan was stuck watching from a league below.

Marns got along famously with the other rookies on his team, and Auston Matthews in particular. Matthews was a Breaker, a P-6 and ranking only slightly below Marns in power level but incredibly skilled at manipulating both magic and play to the point where he was as effective as a natural P-9. Dylan watched them play, the way the two of them slotted together as friends and teammates, and let himself hope.

Dylan tried not to laugh too hard at that particular irony: Marns got along with Toronto boys sent to Arizona, or Arizona boys brought to Toronto, apparently. But if Marns could take that partnership with Matthews and was willing to turn it into a Match, maybe he’d consider repudiating his Match with Dylan.

It wasn’t like Dylan was repulsed by Marns, or anything. They got along well, and they really did mesh fantastically, powerswise.

But that really wasn’t everything.

The problem was that Marns was killing it in Toronto while Dylan was down in the AHL, and if Dylan didn’t break this, if the Marner family started pressuring the contract between their families, if this doesn’t go Dylan’s way—the problem was that Marns’ season of seniority gave his team preference, and the Leafs were sure as hell not letting Marns go to the Coyotes even without the seniority clause, so Dylan would have to move to Toronto and be Mitch Marner’s match. With Auston Matthews and William Nylander, there’s no room for another forward like Dylan. He doesn’t want to go to the Marlies; if he’s going to be stuck on a shitty AHL team, it’s gonna be _his_ shitty AHL team, the one he got to on his own.

The Coyotes aren’t good, not by a long shot. But. _But._ There’s so much potential there, a place for Dylan to develop into someone irreplaceable. He could be a cornerstone, a standout in Arizona. Dylan has always loved a redemption arc, and he’d always loved the idea of captaining a team that’s his through and through.

Dylan was not fucking going back to Toronto, and he especially wasn’t going for Mitch fucking Marner.

Connor had forwarded him a clip of Marns talking in an interview, so Dylan reluctantly clicked through.

Marns was standing against the Leafs backdrop, surrounded by a handful of reporters. The video quality was a little shaky, but it was enough to see Marns’ familiar expressions.

“With your power level,” the interviewer started. “I mean, P-7! Wow! Why don’t you have a closed Match? Surely that would be easier than wearing a blocker all the time.”

Marns’ expression flickered, the kind of micro-expression only someone deeply familiar with him could catch. Dylan was one of those few, and he could see the discomfort and annoyance there.

“I do have a Match, but, uh, we’re in different places right now. Literally. Geographically, I mean. It’s not practically feasible for us to close our Match at the moment. It’s not affecting my play either; the Leafs have some amazingly talented Breakers to be working with. Matts, uh--Auston Matthews is incredibly talented, as are William Nylander and Jake Gardiner.”

Dylan closed the video immediately.

Marns wouldn’t--he wouldn’t tell the Leafs about their Match. It wasn’t sealed, Marns didn’t have any rights to call on, not really.

But.

Marns had threatened to tell the Leafs and the Coyotes about their Match before, and that was a thought that was always hovering in the back of his mind. How far was Marns willing to go to get what he wanted? He wanted Dylan in Toronto with him, so would he be willing to essentially ruin Dylan’s life just to have a closed Match?

Dylan just didn’t know, and he hated that more than anything else.

So he did the only thing he could think of, and texted Connor back with a deliberately incomprehensible string of emoji.

**-|-|-|-**

It was sometimes weird to watch the way other Matches played out, when Dylan was stuck inside of his own. Mikey and Nater were going to get Drafted together, which surprised absolutely no one. They’d submitted their Match Intent for a long before the Draft, and had figured it would be either Jersey or Anaheim, which were the only two teams who’d drawn Match Draft rights that year.

His parents were being kind of pointed about it when he came home for a weekend, exhausted and tired of not being good enough for the Yotes. A second year of the Captaincy was nice, but it wasn’t exactly a secret that he’d rather be somewhere else.

“I still don’t understand how you missed the Match Intent deadline. You could be in Toronto with Mitch now,” Mom kept saying, so Dylan escaped out to the yard to find Nate and Mikey.

It wasn’t hard to find them; just walking out the back door, he could see them sitting out by the trampoline.

Nater was stretched out lengthwise on the grass. He had his sunglasses resting on his belly and an arm thrown over his eyes, luxuriating in the sun. Nater had grown up Water but always loved sunbathing, which most of the Clan just chalked up as a personality quirk.

Dylan crossed the yard and plopped himself down to sit next to Mikey, who was very intently playing something on his creaky old gameboy. Dylan could only assume it was Pokémon.

“‘Sup?”

“Mikey has a date,” Nater said casually, stretching out his toes to prod Mikey in the thigh. “One of the girls’ team that practices before us asked him out.”

Mikey rolled his eyes, jabbing at the buttons a little harder than necessary. “I’m not sure if I’m going or not,” he said. He shoved his snapback further up his forehead and scrubbed away some of the sweat there. “She was cool about it, but I said I’d let her know by tonight.”

“Why wouldn’t you go?” Dylan asked, relieved to be talking about a relationship that wasn’t his own.

Nater laughed. “Come on, Dyls, you know why.”

“We haven’t figured out if we’re a romantic or platonic Match yet, dumbass.” Mikey pushed his snapback back into place. “Like, not everyone has the chemistry you did with Marns. Dating’s weird when you’re in a Match.”

Dylan made a face. “I dunno. I went on dates in Erie. I dated a girl for like a year, remember?”

Mikey dropped his gameboy. “No, I don’t remember! You dated someone else?” He demanded, looking horrified. “ _Dylan_.”

“I never wanted to Match with Mitch,” Dylan fired back. “And it wasn’t _serious_.”

Nate snorted. “Mitch sure thought so.”

Mikey looked at Nater like he’d been betrayed. “Am I the only one who didn’t know about this?”

“It was like six months, it was fun and casual, and then we decided it wasn’t going to work out. Not my fault Marns decided it was the end of the world and had a fucking meltdown.”

“You did it on purpose,” Nater said, as if it was some sort of revelation. He sat up and winced at the bright sunlight. “Dylan, you sneaky bastard. You’re making him jealous.”

“Or, I wanted my first date to be someone other than my fucking _Match_.”

Mikey let the topic drop, but Dylan wasn’t appreciative of the smug, knowing looks he kept giving Dylan.

**-|-|-|-**

Marns’ phone call was unexpected. It came while Dylan was folding more and more laundry, just for something to do with his hands in fucking Erie, in a billet house that felt too empty now that he wasn't in school during the day. He considered calling someone back home, just to hear a familiar voice, but that felt like admitting defeat.

He could always call Crouser. It was kind of nice to be around someone who was feeling just as shitty about the people he was calling friends as Dylan himself was.

Dylan answered Marns’ call, because what the hell. It wasn’t like he could feel worse about himself at this point, honestly.

“Hey,” Marns opened, as if it had been Dylan who’d called.

“Hi?” Dylan replied, and said nothing more. Marns called him; he could start the conversation. Hell, he could carry it. Dylan was just along for the ride, apparently.

“You got star of the week,” Marns said. “Congrats.”

“Thanks.”

Dylan could hear Marns shifting around. He wondered if Marns was in a hotel room or at his apartment. He pretended he wasn’t keeping track of the Leafs’ schedule along with the Coyotes and the Otters. Maybe Marns was in Toronto, but not at his apartment; maybe he was at his parents’ house, where Dylan had spent endless hours as a kid.

“Are you coming up to Toronto for Thanksgiving?”

Dylan snorted. No one in the NHL or the OHL, or any professional hockey league for that matter, got time off for Thanksgiving. “Not enough time.”

“Right. Um, the Leafs will be in Philly in a few weeks, um--could we meet up?”

“Erie’s a bit of a hike from Philly.” Dylan paused. “And the Otters might be on a roadie.”

“Can we cross our schedules to see, though?”

“If you want to.” Dylan thought, and decided to go for broke. “You work well with Matthews.”

Marns barked out a laugh. “Yeah, he’s--he’s awesome. He’s got great stories about Switzerland, but man, he’s just great at hockey.”

“That’s all you can say about him? He’s great at hockey?”

“Wouldn’t want to make you jealous,” Marns teased cheerfully. “His dad lives with him up here, and I think it’s just so he wouldn’t have to billet with anyone. His dad’s a Caster, and he’s got some awesome tips. American magic schools are _weird_.”

“Yeah?”

“I guess you’d know, you went to school in Erie. Did you know his mom’s a Null? Americans are so fucking weird. Could you imagine?”

Dylan hummed. “Hey, so if you’re getting along well with Matthews, are you considering a Match with him?”

There’s a thud, like Marns had dropped his phone, and a scrabbling noise. When Marns came back on the line, he sounded furious. “What the _fuck_ , Stromer? We’ve been over this. You’re my Match, I want _you_.”

“Yeah, but he’s closer, and he’s of your power level, and it’d work better for both of you. He’s American, he probably doesn’t have an arranged Match anyways, and that way I don’t have to move to Toronto.”

“I’d come to Arizona,” Marns said.

“No, you wouldn’t,” Dylan countered. He reached for the puzzle cube on his bedside table, panels of complicated spells that would slide aside as he tugged them apart to reveal a prize in the center. “Why would you? You’re doing what every single one of us 6ix boys dreamed of. You’re playing for the Leafs. You have seniority. Toronto loves you. There’s literally no reason for you to get traded.”

Marns mumbled something Dylan can’t hear, but spoke up clearly before Dylan could ask what he’d said. “But it would make you happy.”

“Doesn’t matter; as long as we’re matched it won’t happen. You have seniority. The Leafs won’t give you up. I want to stay in Arizona, and you can’t come here, so the easiest solution is to petition for a Match dissolution.” Dylan finished one side panel and flipped the cube over to work on the opposite side. “And then you could Match with Matthews. The two of you, Matched, on a line? You’d be killer for the Leafs. No one in your front office would ever dream of trading either of you.”

Marns was quiet for a moment.

“If I came to Arizona,” he said. “You’d marry me.”

Dylan snorted. “Sure,” he said, humoring Marns. “You move Heaven and Earth to get traded to Arizona, and I’ll marry you. But we both know that won’t happen and besides, if you want to marry someone so bad a dissolution will be the easiest. We still have a childhood Match, it’s not totally binding. I’m sure your parents can find someone if Matthews doesn’t work out. You’re more universally compatible than I am.”

“And if I want _you_?”

“Then you’ll have to move to Arizona. But you don’t, so it’s a moot point.”

Marns hadn’t hung up; Dylan could hear his breathing on the other end of the line.

“Good to know what you really think of me,” Marns said, and then really did hang up.

**-|-|-|-**

Dylan started thinking Marns was serious about the time Auston Matthews texted him to as why Marns had been pestering him with questions about the real estate market in Arizona. Dylan managed an answer and hung up as soon as he could, turning ideas over in his head. He came up with a few options, none of which he liked.

He punched the fucking wall.

Then he called Marns.

“You fucking didn’t,” he yelled when the call connected. “What the _hell_ , Marner? You asshole, you fucking _didn’t._ Don’t you _fucking dare_.”

“Um,” a voice that was very much not Mitch Marner’s replied. “I’m going to guess that this is actually Dylan Strome and I should pass the phone over.”

“What the fuck,” Dylan spat to, presumably, Auston Matthews, and hung up.

His phone rang again immediately. He rejected the call, only for it to ring again. This repeated a handful of times, then his phone went silent.

Dylan exhaled.

Dylan’s billet mom leaned through Dylan’s door frame. “Why does Mitch Marner want to talk to you so bad?” She asked, and it was a frigidly painful moment where Dylan tried to figure out how many people Marns must have gone through to get Dylan’s billet mom’s number. The shortest string he came up with involved Brownie texting Davo texting Brinksy and the rest of the Otters phone tree until he got the right phone number. The more likely string included Marns calling Dylan’s mother for his emergency contact information.

“Fuck,” Dylan said, then: “Tell him to take his Match and funnel it back up his ass, and I never want to talk to him again. Those words _exactly_.”

He must have looked a little crazed, because his billet mother retreated immediately.

Here was the thing about Match marriages. Their families had already agreed to them. Somewhere, there was a contract in triplicate with six-year-old Dylan’s signature on it. All Marns had to do was declare Match rights and Dylan’s life would get very, very complicated indeed.

Matches weren't about romance. They were about compatibility and compromise. It was about balancing out Casters and Breakers, about having a partner for daily life spells, an outlet for your magic.

Marns was right--their match scores, from each of the three tests they’d taken, at six, and fifteen, and nineteen, were off the charts. When they played on a line together, it connected easily, smoothly, their magics reaching out for each other.

So yeah, they were compatible as fuck. It was more that Dylan resented someone taking his choice away, and he wasn’t a fan of compromise to begin with.

If there was a genuine lack of interest on one of their parts, if Dylan really didn’t want the Match and was willing to push, he could do it. But that would mean a year of arbitration, of truth spells and signed confessions, and it would mean dragging this process out. It would mean making their Match and the arbitration a matter of public record, and Toronto sports media would tear him to shreds for dragging Marns through this.

Dylan didn’t know what he was going to do, and he didn’t know what move Marns was going to make. It didn’t seem like Marns had that problem, because he just kind of showed up at Dylan’s house a week after Dylan returned home for the summer. Dylan was kind of grieving, knowing he’d never play Otters hockey ever again, but he was also looking forward to playing in Arizona.

Dylan thought it was kind of hilarious that Marns was just showing up to make plans, not when Dylan was planning on breaking the Match as fast as he knew how.

No one else was home; Little Matt and Little Ryan had a summer camp CIT thing, and the Bigs hadn’t quite gotten home for the summer. Mama McLeod was next door, but Dylan had the Strome house to himself. Seeing Mitch was a bit of a shock to the system; it was rare they’d ever really been alone in the Strome house.

Dylan was surprised enough that he just let Mitch push his way into the house.

“We need to talk,” Mitch said. “Because I’m really sure we’re not reading the same play.”

“Uh,” Dylan said, and followed Mitch up to his own bedroom. “Hi?”

“Hi.” Mitch closed the door behind Dylan, and it was the two of them alone in the room together. Neither of them made to sit down, despite Dylan having not only his desk chair but Matty’s, moved in for a Mario tournament. “Okay. Talking. We’re adults. We can do this.”

Dylan ran his hands through his hair. “Why are you _here_?”

“Our match scores were insane,” Mitch said. “Eighty percent, Dylan. That’s _insane_.”

“So you said. Why did you say yes?” Dylan asked, and Mitch clearly knew how to answer the question Dylan wasn’t going to say in its entirety.

“Because there are things I don't know about myself,” he said. Dylan tipped his head back, and felt Mitch move closer. “And because there are things you don't know about yourself, either, so maybe we'll make a whole together.”

“Would you really come to Arizona?”

Mitch shrugged, as if the answer was the simplest thing in the world. “You’re there, so I want to be there too.”

Dylan closed his eyes and pressed his head further back against the wall. Mitch crowded even further into his space, his feet in between Dylan’s.

“Do you really want me to leave?” Mitch asked. There were three inches between them, but the slump of Dylan’s shoulders put them nearly at a height. The wall was cool behind Dylan, and Mitch was warm in front of him.

“I don’t know,” Dylan said, and let Mitch cup his cheek with a warm palm. He wasn’t sure what made him say it, but—“Bread making hands.”

“What?”

“Your hands are warm. Bread making hands.”

Mitch chuffed out a laugh and rubbed his thumb over Dylan’s cheekbone. “Gonna need to break that one down for me, Dyls.”

“Warm hands to activate the yeast. Cold hands don’t melt the butter when making pastry dough. Ergo, warm hands are bread making hands, cold hands are pastry making hands.”

“I always heard cold hands, warm heart,” Mitch said, and he’s so close he barely needed to whisper. “You gonna let me kiss you?”

“You seem to do what you want anyways.”

“Only because you want it too.” Mitch gave Dylan a close-mouthed kiss, their lips brushing together. “You never said no.”

“Mm,” Dylan said, waiting to see where Mitch was going to take this.

“Your objections were never about me. You never told me you didn’t want me. You didn’t want to come to Toronto. You wanted us to be equals on our team. You never objected to me, just the circumstances around us.”

“Yeah?” Dylan challenged. “What else did you notice about me?”

“You love puzzles more than just about anything,” Mitch said, and tilted his head a little. “You always have something in your hands that you’re picking apart. No one makes you laugh harder than Davo. You eat marshmallows on your hot dogs because of a dare from Mikey McLeod, and you still do it to drive them nuts. You’re a romantic who wants to be wooed, and I’m going to give that to you. You like red skittles best, but let Matty take them if he wants them; You put milk in the bowl before cereal, you weirdo. You like hand holding and cuddling, and you’re territorial as fuck, and you like me.”

Dylan inhaled, ready to argue, but Mitch surged forth.

“You want to be romanced. You want a friend, a lover, your favorite person. You want to be my favorite person. You want to be taken care of, cherished, and not like an obligation.”

“Mitch…”

“No, listen to me. I’m not here because our parents made an arrangement fifteen years ago. I’m here because I want _you_. We might’ve been matched, but I am choosing you every opportunity that I am given.”

“Doesn’t matter, though,” Dylan said again. “I can’t come to Toronto and you can’t leave them. We won’t be helpful to each other as Matches.”

“So? Plenty of Matches don’t play together. And if I wanted you, anyways, not the Match?”

“You keep saying that.”

Mitch looked solemn, still up close in Dylan’s space. “I don’t want a Breaker to have a Breaker. Matts and Marty are good to play with, and my blocker works fine off ice. I want you, because we balance, because you push me, because you make me laugh, and when I think of a future I think of you being there with me.”

Dylan considered that. “So you think you’re in love with me.”

“No, not yet. I love you, and I love how we work together, but I’d rather date you, I think.”

“You’re going to date me,” Dylan says dumbly. “Why would you do that?”

Mitch is close enough that when he blinks his eyelashes tickle against Dylan’s neck. “Because we might be Matched, but you’re not in love with me. I’m gonna fix that.”

“Why?”

“Let me have a year and a day,” Mitch said instead of answering. He was holding his hands out, wrists to the sun. “If in a year and a day, you’re not in love with me, I’ll ask my parents to call off the Match, and I won’t fight when you ask yours.”

Dylan considered. “And your prize is…what, me?”

“You fall in love with me, in that year and that day, and you don’t challenge the match. We get married.” Mitch’s eyes were too blue, and Dylan was too sure of his answer.

“Okay.” Dylan nodded. “You think Connor will bind us?”

Mitch dropped his hands. “Yeah. He would.”

“So a year and a day,” Dylan said, feeling the weight of tradition settle onto this...idea of Mitch’s. A year and a day meant everything--for centuries, a couple together for a year and a day was married; the old quests and stories all came down to a year and a day; it was deeply entrenched in magical contract law as far back as anyone could remember. It meant Mitch had thought about this, and had come up with the cleanest, most legally binding argument he could.

There wasn’t much Dylan could say to that.

“I know coming when you call isn’t everything,” Mitch said, peeking up at Dylan through his lashes. “But--I don’t want you miserable, Dyl. I just...I want you, you know? In every way you’ll have me. Not because we’re Bound, but because you want me too.”

Dylan sighed, finding it hard to meet Mitch’s gaze.

“I just want a chance,” Mitch murmured, and laid a kiss on Dylan’s mouth. “Please.”

“I already agreed. What more do you want?”

Mitch quirked a smile. “Well.”

Dylan shoved at him. “Fine, right, okay, whatever.”

**-|-|-|-**

Connor thought they were both idiots, but he agreed to the binding. He was Null to Mitch’s Caster and Dylan’s Breaker, and so he could swear the oath between them.

“You’re still going to have to walk me through the steps,” Connor said, rubbing at his forehead. They’d woken him up from a nap by knocking on his door, and his hair was still rumpled despite the hour and a half of talking they’d done. “But--okay. To clarify what’s going on here. Dylan accidentally issued a quest--”

“Subconsciously,” Mitch corrected.

Dylan elbowed him. “Accidentally.”

“--whatever--and Mitch accepted it. If Dylan isn’t in love with Mitch at the end of 366 days--”

“You really should just call it a year and a day,” Dylan said, and this time Mitch elbowed him as Connor kicked him under the table. “Ow, what the fu--”

“ _Shut up_ , Dyls. At the end of 366 days, you both break the contract as nice and neat and legally as you can. If Dyls is in love with Marns at the end of a year and a day--happy now, Stromer? Then you get married?”

“Engaged,” Mitch corrected, grinning. Dylan elbowed him again. “Ow, spousal abuse--”

Connor shook his head. “And you need a Null to bind the Oath, to satisfy the rule of threes, and as part of which we’re all sworn to secrecy?”

“And we get nifty temporary tattoos,” Dylan added. “Well, Marns and I do. You get nothing. Why do Nulls have all the fun?”

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” Connor retorted. “Okay. Anything special I need to say?”

Mitch shoved his phone at Connor. “Just read the stuff that starts with Binder, and...we’ll do the rest, I guess?”

“Okay.” Connor pushed his hair back and straightened up. “I want this to be on the record: I’m doing this because you’re both my friends, and I think you’re both being dumb, and if this is the solution you’re both happy with I’ll go along with it. But seriously, for the record: you’re both idiots.”

Dylan shrugged. “That’s fine.”

“Alrighty, then. Okay. I am Connor of the Nulls, child of the soil.” Connor set Mitch’s phone down and reached out to take Dylan’s hand in his own left, and Mitch’s hand in his right. “Who comes before me to swear an oath, and what do they ask to be bound?”

“I am Dylan of the Breakers, child of the Goddess,” Dylan said, the words of an oath coming smoothly despite never having used them before. “I will honor my vow to Mitch of the Casters, child of the Sky; if he does not meet the terms, our Match will be split.”

Carefully, he wound the copper-red ribbon around Mitch’s wrist, holding the loose ends in his own open palm. It was awkward using only one hand, but he managed.

“I am Mitch of the Casters, child of the Sky.” Mitch’s eyes never left Dylan’s, his voice remarkably steady as he wound his own blue ribbon around Dylan’s wrist. “I will honor my vow to Dylan of the Breakers, child of the Goddess. If he loves me after a year and a day, our Match will be complete.”

“I am the Null Connor, child of the soil,” Connor said. “I have witnessed this oath, and I see it complete. Between you, let there be a year and a day--three on three upon three on three--for the terms to be met. The consequences have been set forth and agreed to, and I see this quest to be binding by the laws of magic and the covenant of the soil.”

When Dylan looked down, the loose ends of their ribbons had woven together, making the ribbons impossible to remove. His blue ribbon was sinking under his skin, a twin to the amp sitting on his other wrist. Mitch’s was doing the same. If the quest succeeded, it would fade away on its own, in time. If the quest failed, the ribbon would stay beneath their skin forever. Dylan wasn’t wholly sure which way he expected the ribbon to go, in a year and a day.

“For the record,” Connor said, dropping his hands to his sides. “I think you’re both dumbasses, and this is going to end _so fucking badly_.”

“It wouldn’t have worked if we weren’t serious,” Mitch pointed out. “Come on. It’ll work.”

“You live in different _countries_.” Connor threw his hands up in the air. “I can’t even with either of you.”

**-|-|-|-**

Dylan’s mom pushed the door open.

“Can I come in?”

“You already are,” Dylan grumbled, but shifted over to let her sit on the edge of the bed.

“You issued Mitch a quest?” she asked, and stroked her hand over his forehead. “Dylan, baby, are you that upset with the Match?”

Dylan rolled over so he wouldn’t have to look her in the eye. “No one listens,” he grumbled into the soft flannel of his pillowcase. “I told you I didn’t like him.”

She rubbed at the small of his back. “Is that really what’s going on here? You know, we thought you had a crush. It was always Mitch this, Marns that. Your dad and I thought the two of you were doing okay the last couple of years.”

“That was before he threatened to tell the Leafs about our Match.”

He couldn’t see her, but he could hear the pause. “And what would be so bad about that? You’d be closer to home.”

“The Coyotes are _mine_ ,” he said, but that wasn’t near enough to describe how he felt about Mitch, about the Match, about hockey and magic and his family. “I don’t want--I want a team of my own, a success that’s just mine. Not his.”

She kept rubbing slow soothing circles. “So you issued a quest? Dylan, baby, that sounds a hell of a lot like you want him to prove something.”

Dylan kept his face buried in the pillow, but he mumbled out a confession. “I want him to want _me_ , not the idea of me he’s had for--forever.”

“It can go the other way too, you know,” she suggested. “You could have told us, Dylan.”

“And said what? The Match you think is perfect is, what, better than me at hockey?”

“He can be right for all the wrong reasons, and wrong for all the right ones. But you seem to think he’s worth a quest, worth giving him a chance.” Mom stopped rubbing circles and pressed a kiss to his head. “Are you actually going to give him that chance?”

“I don’t think I can do anything else.”

**-|-|-|-**

Mitch liked to text, so Dylan got plenty of messages about how they should approach the quest and their match. Nothing really seemed interesting--pairs pottery, Marns, really?--until a summer afternoon where the Strome-McLeod boys were hanging out in the yard.

Mikey and Nate were sparring while the Littles were competing to see who could get the most air on the trampoline. Big Matt had already gone to find the first aid kit for when it inevitably went wrong. Big Ryan was ostensibly being a spotter, but had about as much confidence in that arrangement as he did in Connor playing goalie. An interesting idea, but probably doomed to fail.

Dylan was running his fingers over his wrist idly and watching as Little Matt nearly cleared Little Ryan's head with a well-timed jump when he realized Marns was watching Mikey and Nater.

“What's so interesting about the superbuddies?” Dylan asked.

Mitch leaned forward. “So Nater and Mikey could teach us how to spar, you think? Practice, actually get to know each other as Matches?”

Dylan shrugged loosely. “Don’t think they can do it personally, but we could do the same class, I guess.”

At that point, Little Ryan took the spill off the trampoline they'd all been expecting, so the conversation kind of stopped there for awhile.

Mikey and Nater’s sparring class was a private tutor willing to work around their schedule before the season started up in earnest. The teacher was clearly used to new Matches and people who were entirely unfamiliar with each other, not the weird half-familiarity Mitch and Dylan had with each other.

“Meet each other’s eyes,” she said, once she’d positioned them facing each other on the mat. “The idea of the staff is to be an extension of yourself, to know each other’s movements as your own. If you can predict your physical behavior, you can begin to work through and predict the metaphysical behavior of your abilities.”

Their years of playing with and against each other in hockey must have kicked in, because going and back with the staves at walking speed was almost excruciatingly easy.

“Okay,” their teacher said. “You’re reading each other. Start verbalizing how you know what the other will do.”

“Dylan is going to go high,” Mitch said, just as Dylan moved to do just that. “He looked up and shifted his weight forward.”

“Good,” the teacher said. “Dylan.”

Mitch had already blocked, and was settling back into a neutral stance.

“I don’t know,” Dylan said. “I--staff middle?”

“Why?” the teacher prodded.

“It’s his default,” Dylan said, moving to counter Mitch’s low strike. “Or--I guess low.”

“It’s a good start, and he had reaction time when I asked you to expand,” she told them. “It’s not unusual for half a Matched pair to read their partner a little more instinctively. It’s not a lost cause, though--like any skill it can be trained and learned.”

After their first handful of practices, Mitch looked at Dylan. “I’m not having fun with this,” he said. “It’s not--us, you know?”

Dylan shrugged loosely. “I mean, there’s other stuff Matched pairs do to get to know each other.”

“I think we could probably just do skating and passing drills, honestly,” Mitch said, and that actually sounded like a good idea to Dylan.

They ended up at a practice rink by Mitch’s house that had an open ice practice time for hockey players during the summer, so it’s Mitch and Dylan and a bunch of strangers, all kind of doing their own thing.

Dylan and Mitch took up some space in the middle of the rink and set about passing a single puck between them. Neither of them were in full gear, but there was a definite ease to their movements that made Dylan relax into the exercise. Here on the ice, he could read the set of Mitch's shoulders, the delicate flicks of his wrists.

Mitch started calling Dylan's movements a few minutes into their drill, the way the staff teacher had tried to get them to do. On the ice, Dylan felt comfortable enough to call a response.

By the end of their session, they've gathered a few imitators and a bit of an audience.

“Way better idea,” Mitch said cheerfully, gathering up their stuff and giving a jaunty bow to their onlookers.

Dylan snorted, but followed suit.

The next time Mitch came over, they headed out to the backyard with some street hockey balls and ran another passing drill. After, Mitch pressed a kiss to Dylan’s cheek.

“We would should go on an actual date,” he said. “Pick you up at seven?”

Dylan wasn’t sure what possessed him, but he agreed.

**-|-|-|-**

“You’ve been on dates before,” Matty said, lying on Dylan’s bed and openly mocking him. “Dates with Mitchy before, even.”

“No I haven’t,” Dylan said, and shoved half of his clothes to the side so he could keep rifling through his closet. “Fuck off.”

Matty snorted. “Just wear a button down and jeans.”

“It’s summer.”

“So? You’ll probably end up inside somewhere. Unless you want to go in basketball shorts and a ripped up t-shirt--”

Dylan pulled at his hair. “It’s _Marns_. Why do I even care?”

“Uh, newsflash, dumbass, you’ve always cared what Mitchy thinks.” Matty got up and grabbed a clean t-shirt out of Dylan’s laundry pile. It was one of the few shirts Dylan owned that wasn’t emblazoned with a team logo. “This and your nice jeans. It’s not like you’re going anywhere fancy.” Matty dug through the pile again and produced a plaid flannel, which he chucked at Dylan.

“This is like, a size and a half too small for me--”

Matty held up a hand, fingers sparking with magic. ‘I can make those Daisy Dukes real fuckin’ quick, bro. Put it on.”

Dylan took the jeans and shirt and went to change.

**-|-|-|-**

So, like. Dylan went on a date with Mitch, and it wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever done. It felt like any other afternoon hanging out with Marns, before they’d gotten into a fight but after they’d started to get along with each other.

Mitch was going to be smug, but Dylan couldn't really find it in himself to really mind.

**-|-|-|-**

Connor was yawning deeply as he opened his front door; Dylan and Mitch had both driven a ways to get there and were suitably caffeinated, while Connor had clearly just rolled out of bed. Technically, by the quest by-laws, Connor didn’t have to be there to supervise the gift exchange. Less technically, Dylan was sure someone was going to get punched, and Connor was an excellent referee if that wound up happening.

“Come on,” Connor said, rubbing at his eyes. “Let’s do this. I’ve got to finish packing to head out to Edmonton tomorrow.”

“Your captainly duties summon you?” Mitch teased. Connor punched Mitch in the arm, and then led them to his kitchen.

Connor poured himself a cup of coffee and plopped himself down at the table. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”

Mitch’s gift fit the criteria perfectly: something deeply personal to the giver, and of infinite use to the receiver. It was just that Dylan's gift was way, way better than Mitch's butter-soft blanket, the one that had been tucked over the end of his bed for years. Dylan had petted over the softness of it, appreciating the heirloom charmwork woven into it, and then given Mitch a vial containing his own blood.

“You can’t give me this,” Mitch said, eyes wide. “ _Dylan_.”

“Don’t fuck up with it, then.”

Mitch’s expression shifted to cooly furious. “Do you trust me that little?”

“I think the evidence says I trust you that much,” Dylan shot back. “I’m giving you what you need to get what you want. Don’t fuck up with it.”

“Back up,” Connor cut in. “Explain to the Null here what the hell is going on.”

“Dylan gave me his blood,” Mitch snapped.

“Three drops of blood from my left ring finger,” Dylan corrected. “It’s the core ingredient needed for a love spell.”

“Fucking hell,” Connor swore, eyes wide. “And you dragged me into this?”

“He won’t use it,” Dylan said. “Not if he knows what’s good for him.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Aren’t you supposed to be convincing me of that?” Dylan demanded of Mitch. “I give my gift freely. Do you accept it or not?”

“Yes,” Mitch gritted out. “Fine, yes, I accept it. You asshole.”

Dylan smiled and Mitch scowled. It was kind of beautiful.

**-|-|-|-**

Dylan’s phone was buzzing off the hook these days--Marns wasn’t holding back with the texts and the calls now. They were communicating a whole lot more now, which--wasn’t entirely as bad as Dylan had thought. Mitch had insisted they talk more, try to actually tell each other what they were thinking instead of assuming. It was definitely different to how their interactions had been before.

Dylan had arrived in Arizona for training camp, and had turned on his phone to thirty notifications from Marns.

Mitch texted exactly the way Dylan expected him to, in long streams of consciousness without expecting a direct reply to anything in particular. Dylan got snapchats of the little details of Mitch’s life, from a bright pink protein shake that showed up on Mitch’s table with alarming frequency, to dumb selfies, to little clips of the Leafs locker room before someone inevitably smacked Mitch’s phone out of his hand.

Dylan usually texted longer updates with more intent, but their texting styles ended up being compatible enough once they settled into a rhythm. Mitch had called when Dylan was bumped back down to the Roadrunners, but now they texted easily and regularly.

Dylan did think about his Match with Marns sometimes, but mostly he thought about being so good with the ‘Runners that the Coyotes gave him more than two games up in the show.

It helped a little that the Roadrunners’ record was miles better than that of the Coyotes. It definitely helped his ego more than a little when he started racking up the points, heading towards a franchise record.

He got along well with the other guys.  The Roadrunners were still such a new team that there wasn’t a ton of established dynamic to fit into, so Dylan started poking around with some of the guys his age to make their own traditions and success. Crouse was up in the show, but he was still a familiar face, as was Domi. Nick Merkley was going through a lot of the same stuff as Dylan, so it was good to be around him again. Maybe weirdest was how well Dylan got along with Michael Latta, but that was just how it went in hockey. You bonded fast with unexpected people, and it paid off on the ice.

No one asked about the Leafs blue ribbon around Dylan’s wrist. They wouldn’t; quests were too personal to be questioned, unless the questor asked for their assistance. Dylan could see just how much the other Roadrunners wanted to know, though, especially once people started noticing the rust-red ribbon around Mitch’s wrist.

A lot of things were bright blue. A lot of things were rust red. Not a lot of things were both, and were linked to two people who kept circling back to each other.

It was Latts who brought it up first, out of Dylan’s assortment of Roadrunner and Coyote teammates.

Both Connor and Mitch approved when he sent an inquiring text, so Dylan found himself spilling the entire story to Latts.

“...I guess it's kind of a lot,” Dylan finished, when the details of the quest and his history with Marns was all laid out.

Latts looked thoughtful. “I dunno, dude.” He passed his fingers over his own amp. “I grew up Canadian too, so--I think I have similar opinions to you, but your whole situation is...weird, I’m not gonna lie.”

Dylan frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You’re the most serious about Matches as anyone I’ve ever met, Canadian, American, Russian, whatever. I’ve never met anyone whose Match is the be-all end-all like yours is. For the rest of us, a Match is just a suggestion. It’s something that evens out everything else. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work; no one else drags quests and blood sacrifices and anything else into it. Just look at the Americans; they’ve almost done away with Matches, and there you are. How fucking archaic is your coven anyways?”

“I don’t think we’re particularly archaic,” Dylan protested. “I mean--it’s important, you know, our alignment, and we’ve got enough Casters and Breakers there has to be some kind of organization, and--are we really that strange?”

Latts patted Dylan’s shoulder. “That might be something for you to think about, dude.”

**-|-|-|-**

**MARNSMALLOW** (10:17 am)  
Dude check your Snapchat!!!!!

 **DYLAN** (10:25 am)  
If it's a dick pick I'm deleting you

 **MARNSMALLOW** (10:26 am)  
I am shocked and horrified

 **MARNSMALLOW** (10:27 am)  
Would i do that to you

 **MARNSMALLOW** (10:28 am)  
I can't believe you would believe that of me

 **MARNSMALLOW** (10:31 am)  
No but seriously

 **DYLAN** (11:11 am)  
Where the fuck did you find a wiener dog

 **MARNSMALLOW** (11:12 am)  
It belongs to one of the pr guys!!!

 **MARNSMALLOW** (11:13 am)  
His name is Mr Muffles and i would die for him

 **MARNSMALLOW** (4:01 pm)  
Oh my god auston is the slowest driver on the planet

 **MARNSMALLOW** (4:03 pm)  
HE KEEPS SMIRKING AND TURNING THE RADIO UP

 **MARNSMALLOW** (4:05 pm)  
THIS IS ON PURPOSE

 **MARNSMALLOW** (4:18 pm)  
Okay so I'm home now you should call me while i get my xbox on

Dylan grinned and hit call.

“Hey,” Mitch said on the other end of the line, and Dylan settled in to talk for a few hours.

**-|-|-|-**

It didn’t take long for Dylan to settle into the rhythm of life with the ‘Runners.

He and Latts dressed up as cops for Halloween and dragged Merks into it; the party they went to that night was fun, but not as much as Mitch’s increasingly scandalized texts the morning after.

Mitch accidentally dyed his face green for Halloween, so Dylan wasn’t going to take any shit about how much underwear he was or wasn’t wearing under his costume from Mitch.

Merks was one of Dylan’s guys now, and the two of them spent a lot of time together, harassing Latts or team leadership, and waiting for the call up. The majority of them team knew what it felt like to be pushed out of the NHL and the instinctive need to claw their way back up; they knew what it was like to watch their friends from juniors succeed. No one was particularly inclined to wallowing over it, but sometimes it was good to just sit and breathe through the hurt with someone who got it.

Dylan recorded a seven-game points streak by November, which was a significant and much-needed boost to his ego. Even better was when he got called up to play for the ‘Yotes.

The ‘Yotes moved fast. Judging by the amount of phone calls and texts Dylan already had by the time he’d hung up from his call with the GM, the news had already broken.

Dylan was a little wary of how long he’d be up with the ‘Yotes, considering his last two stints with them hadn’t gone well or lasted long.

That wasn’t really stopping everyone else from bombarding his phone with exclamation points. Mitch, being Mitch, left no less than forty messages and a half-dozen voicemails. Voicemails one through five were incoherent babbling; voicemail six was just screaming as Mitch’s teammates apparently tackled him to the floor and confiscated his phone, if the follow-up message from Auston Matthews was anything to go by.

Dylan was pretty sure he’s the only one less excited about his call-up than literally anyone he knew. He didn’t want to get his hopes up too high: so far, the Coyotes have booted his ass back down just as soon as they could. But between Mitch and Connor and the rest of the 15 Draft class, he’s pretty sure someone’s going to kidnap him for a night of celebration drinking.

In the plus column, Dylan’s first game up was against the Oilers, so he’d be playing against Davo and Big Ryan.

On second thought, maybe that fit more into the negatives column.

**-|-|-|-**

Connor and Ryan basically kidnapped Dylan after the Oiler’s morning skate. The Coyotes had an even earlier practice, but Dylan had stuck around to talk with the coaching staff and ensure his gear had made it up safely from Tucson.

Ryan was waiting outside the Coyotes home locker room and grabbed Dylan by the shoulders.

“Holy shit,” Dylan yelped. As much as Dylan had expected an ambush at some point during the Oiler’s visit, he hadn’t expected it while Connor was still stuck doing media. “Goddess _bless_ , Ryan, is this what’s behind the Oilers’ win streak? Giving your opponents heart attacks?”

“Nah, I saved that for you,” Ryan said cheerfully and started steering Dylan towards the visiting locker room. “We’re going for lunch. Know anywhere good? Of course you don’t; you're still new here. I bet Grubhub can give us some pointers.”

Dylan let himself be dragged, and mostly gave some of the amused Oilers coaching staff a sheepish grin as his brother hauled him down the hallway.

“Thanks for getting called up for this game, saved me the drive out to Tucson. Oh, hey, there's Connor.”

“I'm being taken hostage,” Dylan said flatly. “Connor, tell Mitch he gets none of my stuff. I leave everything to Matty, he’s my favorite brother.”

“That’s a lie,” Connor said, sauntering over and slinging his arm over Dylan's other shoulder. “Nater is clearly your favorite brother, you should leave everything to him.”

Ryan squawked.

**-|-|-|-**

“How're you holding up with the Quest?” Ryan asked, once they were settled in at a table at a pub-style restaurant a couple of blocks from the arena. Connor had chosen it, citing a deep need for shepherd’s pie.

Dylan put his head down on the table. “I should’ve known this wasn’t a friendly welcome to the show lunch.”

“In what world would it ever have been?” Connor poked at Dylan’s arm and then pinched Dylan’s ear. “Dyls. Details.”

“I welcome death,” Dylan said to the smooth wood of the table. “I'll even take a slow one at this point.”

“The beer is mine,” Ryan said, apparently to the server. “Lemon water is Mr Acne over there--ow, did you have to _kick_ me, Connor--and you put the diet coke right by his head there, he’s having an existential crisis.”

“My existential crisis is that you exist,” Dylan grumbled, and heard the clink of a glass being set down. “Thank you, sir, madam, person of indeterminate gender who I can’t see.”

Connor poked Dylan again with a damp fingertip. “Dylan. Details.”

“We call a lot. He’s not as annoying as he used to be.” Dylan picked his head up to glare at Connor, who innocently put an ice cube back in his cup. “I'm kind of annoyed how much everyone else is invested in this.”

Ryan snorted. “Dylan, buddy. You two have been a soap opera since you were like six. At this point we’re just dying for a season finale.”

“Can’t we just focus on Connor’s love life instead?”

“If there was anything there to focus on, sure.” Connor prodded Dylan again. “ _Dylan_.”

“If there were details to give, I’d give them!” Dylan whined, and stayed face down on the table until their food came.

**-|-|-|-**

So like, the Coyotes lost to the Oilers, which seemed about right for how Dylan’s life was going.

Mitch texted him a play by play of every minute of Dylan’s ice time, so that was pretty cool.

**-|-|-|-**

Even cooler was when Dylan scored his first NHL goal against the Devils. That was one of the best moments of Dylan's life, he thought.

**-|-|-|-**

Latts got traded to Jersey while Dylan was up with the Coyotes. There was no way for Dylan to say goodbye in person, not feasibly. Latts didn’t text; earlier in the season, he’d told Dylan he never did in the first few weeks following a move, so he could concentrate on the new place.

It was a shitty thing to lose a good friend, especially right before the Winter Solstice, but then the Yotes sent Dylan back down to Tucson, and that was even shittier. Dylan only played one game back with the ‘Runners before the break, so his head was all kinds of jetlagged and groggy from travel.

The NHL, amazingly, gave them the holiday week off. They did the same for equinoxes, which meant the season sometimes started a little early or ended a little late to compensate, but they got the holiday week off to observe their faiths and magics.

There was a rumor that one year they hadn’t, and almost every Breaker’s powers had been near uncontrollable on the ice that day. That would have been at the beginning of the league, and it might have just been rumor, but regardless, they had from the 20th to the 27th off, with the Coyotes first game back against the Leafs.

That set Mitch and Dylan into a squabble, about which holiday function they would attend. As a Breaker, the winter solstice was Dylan’s holiday, and as one of three Breakers in the McLeod-Strome clan, he couldn’t just skip. Bringing Mitch would start cementing their Match. Mitch’s family went and hiked out to the woods for the whole week, which was a solid no on Dylan’s part.

Connor, amazingly, was the one who offered a solution.

“Come to Edmonton for the holiday week,” he suggested. “That way you’re neither on each other’s territory, and no one has to be part of the other’s rituals in any permanent way. There’s no taboo like that on Christmas.”

Connor’s family was Catholic. To the best of Dylan’s understanding from the two years they’d been in Erie together, they observed Christmas, a holiday where their god incarnated in the form of an old man to deliver them a tree to as to remind them that the winter nights would get shorter from then on out. There was definitely a midnight ritual with candles and Latin, somewhere in there, and red clothing.

To be fair, he’d never bothered to learn much about Christmas, not when the Solstice was so beautiful and all-consuming.

Dylan flew up to Toronto for the Solstice break, and got picked up at the airport by Chris Marner.

“You’re not the Marner I expected,” he said, slinging his duffel into the backseat.

“Yeah, well, Mitchy has the heaving shits and couldn’t leave the toilet to come get you,” Chris shot back. Dylan grimaced and dropped the topic.

At the Marner house, Chris was concerned with getting Dylan settled into the guest bedroom, suggesting he take a shower after his flight and come to the kitchen for snacks, rather than greeting Mitch.

Dylan immediately pushed Mitch’s door open to find his Match sitting at his desk, peering intently at a puck and muttering angrily at it. Mitch had a deep look of concentration on his face in contrast to the way he was cupping the rubber puck gently in his palms.

“What’re you doing?” Dylan asked. This close, he could see the puck was from a Coyotes-Leafs game, though how Mitch had tracked down one of those Dylan wasn’t sure.

“Making you a gift,” Mitch said, and the lines of concentration in his forehead eased. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

“Your brother was being sketchy as fuck. I wanted to know what you were up to.” Dylan watched as Mitch slid the puck into a deep blue satin bag. “A present for me?”

“It’s not done.” Mitch leaned back in his chair after tucking the pouch into the top drawer of his desk.

“Well, you’ve got until the 28th to finish it, my guy,” Dylan said. He sat on the desk next to Mitch. “Are we flying together?”

“Did Connor book your tickets, and then send you a venmo request with the caption ‘fly me to the moon’?”

“I got the entirety of My Heart Will Go On, but otherwise yeah.”

“Then I’d assume so.” Mitch grinned up at Dylan. “Our friends are assholes.”

“You’re only just discovering this now?”

Mitch rubbed his hand over Dylan’s knee. “How’re you doing, with the whole--”

“I don’t really want to talk about it, to be honest,” Dylan said. Mitch nodded.

“If you change your mind--”

“I probably won’t, but thanks.”

With Dylan up in Toronto, the Marner family was holding a family dinner. It was, as always, stiff and awkward. Dylan mostly shut down, out of sheer preservation instincts. He spoke when spoken to, and let Mitch take his hand under the table.

Mitch’s parents definitely noticed Dylan’s discomfort, and thankfully dinner was over quickly. Unfortunately, Bonnie Marner kept Dylan back after Mitch and his dad had cleared the table.

“I wanted to talk to you one on one,” she said, voice quiet. If he hadn’t seen her screaming at hockey matches, he’d almost believe this was the most terrifying she ever got. “Mitch, honey, go help your dad figure out the Chromecast. There’s a series of goat videos he’s been wanting to share with the whole family, and we might as well all see them at once instead of him cornering everyone with his phone.”

Mitch gave Dylan a wary look, but stepped out of the room, leaving Dylan alone with his mother-in-law.

“How are you?” she asked, and Dylan stammered through a reply. “No point dragging this out. My grandparents were Matched. Very clear-cut, very proper. I don’t think they loved each other, but they respected each other quite deeply.”

Dylan didn’t know how to respond, so he held in frozen silence. Bonnie kept watching him him.

“You know Paul and I are Nulls, and so is Chris. My parents were, as well. Mitch was...a surprise. First Caster in three generations on my side, and the first in recorded memory on Paul’s.” She smiled with half her mouth. “Impossible boy. Always has to be exceptional.”

Dylan chuffed out a startled laugh at that, and quickly tamped it down, fiddling with his amp.

“We had no idea how to go about getting a Match, and--the two of you were so compatible, so we never pushed to change it. We thought you and Mitch would be good friends. Give him somewhere to belong and learn his magic when we couldn’t teach him. I think we did both of you a disservice.”

“Why--why are you telling me this?” Dylan finally managed to ask.

“Because you’re family at this point, and I don’t know what will happen if you two break up.” She reached out and put her hand on Dylan’s wrist, right over his amp. “We filled the contract with impossible things, so he’d break it and forge his own path. Paul and I didn’t need a Match to find each other, and the idea of arranging my son’s marriage made my skin crawl. We underestimated the both of you, and--I think it hurt you both. I don’t think your parents realized where we were coming from, and we didn’t realize where they were coming from, and by the time everyone was on the same page it was too late to do anything about it.”

“So you’re--what, apologizing?”

Bonnie tilted her head to the side, and left her hands laid over Dylan’s. “Of a sort, I suppose. You two are--something else. I don’t know if you realize that. I’m telling you where we came from and why things got as complicated as they did without our intervention. I failed you as a parent, because I didn’t know the depth of coven culture, and I’m trying to reach out now. If you and your family need to renegotiate the contract to make you happy--which will in turn make Mitch happy--Paul and I are willing to do that.”

“But not to rescind the Match entirely.”

Bonnie shook her head. “No. At this point--I don’t know how to even begin detangling the two of you. Your mother doesn’t know either, and...well, the two of you will be talking when you see her tonight, I assume. Mitch won’t tell me about the quest between you, but from what I do know you’ve gone and tangled yourselves more tightly than any of us anticipated. Maybe that’s not what you want to hear, but I don’t know how else to say it.”

“Okay then,” Dylan said, and pushed back from the table to find Mitch.

They left soon after that; Mitch was quiet as they put their bags in the back of Mitch’s car.

“How much did you hear when I talked with your mom?” Dylan asked once they were loaded up and on their way.

“More than I probably should have,” Mitch admitted. “How are--I didn’t realize our Match was strange to anyone else.”

“To be fair,” Dylan said. “My family is kind of traditional when it comes to Matches. Like. More traditional than most people you’ve probably met.”

“Is that why you hated me for so long?”

Dylan looked at Mitch, watching emotions flicker across Mitch’s face. “A little, I guess. My bigger issue was--marrying you would make my leave my clan and my family.” Mitch’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “Have you read the contract? I’ll become clan Marner. We’d be an air clan. I don’t--I’ve been spirit my whole life. I don’t know how to be air. You don’t have any Casters or Breakers in your family tree; you and I would be starting a clan from scratch.”

Mitch didn’t look at Dylan. “I thought--we won’t be part of your clan anymore?”

Dylan leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “No. You come to us before the marriage. I go to you after.”

Mitch didn’t have anything else to say for the rest of the drive.

They got out to Mississauga in what seemed like the world’s longest drive. The quiet car made Dylan nervous, but he didn’t want to be the one to break the silence. It was too easy to fall into thoughts of where their Match might go from there: they could rewrite the contract, and Mitch could become Clan Strome, or they could keep the contract as it was and forge their own clan.

Most of the Strome household was in the backyard, burning ashes in the firepit for the solstice. Anyone in the house was bundling up and getting ready to go outside. Mitch ducked his head and avoided eye contact by hurrying inside and upstairs.

Dylan, on the other hand, greeted everyone with a wave, and let his dad combine his blood with theirs via a shallow cut in his palm. One of the Aunts bandaged his hand, as she had every year of his life, and laid the yearly blessing on his forehead.

Dylan was a Child of the Goddess. His orientation was Spirit-Breaker, and the Strome-McLeod clan have some pretty serious rituals surrounding the solstice. As one of four Breakers in the Strome-McLeod clan (five, if he counted Nater, who wasn’t yet sworn in entirely) was a part of many of the rituals.

This would be the first year he wouldn’t be there to participate in all of it, and it felt a little strange. The Winter Solstice was the big Breaker holiday, no matter your elemental orientation. Summer solstice was for Casters, and the equinoxes for Nulls, but they were all still holidays where magic simmered the closest to the surface and Dylan’s magic sense felt alive under his skin.

The Marners, on the other hand, were Children of the Sky. Mitch’s orientation was Air-Caster, but he was the only Caster in the clan. Dylan had never attended any of their solstice observations--generally Mitch came to the Strome-McLeods, in the event that his magic started spiralling out of control on the Solstices--but he’d heard about what the Marners did for observation. They went hiking into the woods, on any holiday they had more than a few days off for.

Dylan had seen their planned itinerary for this Winter Solstice and laughed. It basically included driving to the middle of nowhere, hiking a full day into the woods, camping overnight, hiking further to a campsite, and then spending three days there before reversing the entrance process. Dylan was a professional athlete; he wasn’t professionally _insane_.

Mitch already had pulled the trundle out from under Dylan’s bed, and was starting to pop it up to height. Dylan caught the other end of the bed and helped Mitch with the bolts.

“Hey. You okay?”

Mitch snorted. “Normally it’s me asking you that,” he said, but kept working on his bed.

“We don’t have to go join everyone else,” Dylan said finally. “We’re not observing the solstice with them. They don’t need us.”

Mitch just leaned over and pulled Dylan into a kiss.

Dylan startled, but kissed back. Mitch was enthusiastic, but not in a great way. He was using way too much tongue, and nearly bit through Dylan’s lip.

Dylan pulled back from the kiss. “You’re really kind of bad at this.”

Mitch flushed and pushed Dylan away from him, sitting on his trundle and drawing his knees up to his chest. “Shut up. I haven’t done this a lot.”

That gave Dylan pause. “Oh,” he said, and then— “ _Oh._ ”

Mitch was very carefully not meeting Dylan’s eyes. “So like—“

“You mean I get to teach you?” Dylan said, feeling delighted at the prospect of it. Mitch’s cheeks were still stubbornly flushed; embarrassed wasn’t a bad look on Mitch, mussed hair and red mouth and all. “God, Mitch. What _have_ you done? What do you want to do?” Dylan bounced a little and plopped himself down onto his bed. He beamed at Mitch, who was smiling a little now.

“Can we just like--make out for an hour? It can be my Solstice present, but--I always wanted to, every time I shared your room, and we never did--”

“Am I helping you reenact fourteen year old Marns’ dirtiest desires?” Dylan demanded, feeling a gleeful grin spread over his face. “You fucking nerd.”

“Shut up,” Mitch shot back. “Unlike some other people in this room, I’ve only ever kissed one person in my life.”

“You’re telling me the Knights never had post-win kisses?”

“Oh, like the Otters did.”

Dylan snorted. “Yeah, actually. Connor’s an affectionate drunk. And then the kids thought that was what you did after a win, so it was like, a thing.”

“I always kind of wondered about you and Connor.”

“You and me both,” Dylan admitted. “I wished I Matched with him instead of you for awhile, except he’s painfully not into me. Or most guys, for that matter.”

“Have you been leaving me out of gossip?” Mitch demanded, his flush starting to lessen.

Dylan sat back against the headboard of his bed, stretching his legs out and settling in with a sigh. Mitch carefully clambered into Dylan’s lap, knees to either side of Dylan’s hips.

“You don’t have to be so careful,” Dylan said, poking a little at Mitch’s side so he landed more heavily on Dylan’s lap. “Come on.”

Mitch had his eyes open, studying the lines of Dylan’s face. Dylan felt comfortable reaching out and brushing his fingers along the curve of Mitch’s jaw.

“You gonna kiss me or what?” Dylan asked, and pulled Mitch in.

They’d kissed before--when they’d hooked up at tournaments, when they’d kissed on Connor’s doorstep, when they’d dropped casual little pecks on each others’ lips--but they’d never kissed for kissing’s sake. Dylan liked kissing well enough, but he’d never really wanted to spend an afternoon making out with anyone before. Mitch made him kind of want to. Even if Mitch was kind of bad at kissing, Dylan wanted to kiss him enough that he got good at it.

Mitch had closed his eyes, eyelashes dark against his cheeks. Dylan rubbed a gentle circle at the nape of Mitch’s neck and tilted his head for a better angle.

It didn’t surprise Dylan that Mitch giggled while kissing, these little content noises creeping out. Mitch kept trying to speed up the kiss, kept trying to push himself closer to Dylan, like he could crawl inside of Dylan if he kissed him hard enough.

“Easy,” Dylan murmured. “You gonna follow my lead?”

Mitch huffed out a laugh, but he calmed a little.

This time, Dylan let himself linger, felt Mitch ease into it. Mitch slid his free hand down Dylan’s shoulder blade, tickling; Dylan jumped in surprise and bit down on Mitch’s lower lip.

“Ow,” Mitch said, but he was grinning, and this time he led the kiss. This time it felt like a conversation, like bantering back and forth, like the steady hum of Mitch putting out magic and Dylan absorbing it.

Dylan lost track of time, and found he was kind of okay with it.

When Mitch pulled back with a content sigh, he looked--debauched, Dylan’s brain supplied, a mostly-forgotten vocabulary worksheet from high school simmering to the top of Dylan’s brain. Mitch’s mouth was slick and red, and he had a flush high in his cheeks.

“Mm,” he sighed when Dylan ducked his head to suck a hickey into the skin over Mitch’s collarbone.

Dylan got lost in the heat of Mitch’s mouth and forgot that they meant to talk with his mom that evening. They left early enough the next morning that he didn’t get a chance to talk to her then, so he tabled that discussion for later and worried about holding Mitch’s hand during takeoff and landing instead.

Connor’s parents met them at the airport in Edmonton; Dylan hadn’t been expecting Connor himself to show up. That seemed like an invitation for a mob scene. He hadn’t been expecting the senior McDavids either, though.

“We had to get some last minute shopping done,” Mrs. McDavid said cheerfully, gesturing to the shopping bags in the trunk. Mr. McDavid had tossed their suitcases on top of the groceries with no regard for any breakable foods within. “Connor thinks he can order everything off of Amazon or in a subscription box, and forgot he would be feeding a few extra people this week.”

“Out of milk?” Mitch asked, buckling in.

“And bread, and eggs, and cheese, and spaghetti sauce,” Mr. McDavid said wryly. “And fruit, vegetables, carbohydrates…”

“Everything not on a diet plan,” Mitch supplied.

“You professional hockey players know diet plans so well.”

Connor, despite not meeting them at the airport, did meet them at the front door of his house. He was practically vibrating with excitement, looking not unlike a golden retriever puppy.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he said, but then bounced off to help his parents bring in the groceries.

“You think he’s happier to see us, or the Cocoa Pops?” Mitch asked in an undertone.

Connor’s brother snorted from behind them. “Definitely the Cocoa Pops.”

It took a bit, but eventually Connor showed them to his guest room. “My parents are in the other, and my brother on the office pullout,” he said, looking vaguely apologetic. “You’ll have to share this one.”

Dylan shrugged. “I’m used to McLeod-Strome cuddle piles. Sharing with Mitch won’t be the end of the world.”

“What if I slept naked?” Mitch deadpanned.

“Then I’d find the hedge trimmers I know Connor has somewhere, and you’ll regret it greatly.”

Mitch crossed his legs and nodded. “Point taken.”

“I’ll let you guys get some sleep,” Connor said. “I know travel wipes me.”

“It’s more that I’m used to taking naps this time of day,” Mitch admitted.

“I’ll see if you’re up in a few hours,” Connor agreed, and shut the door behind himself.

“Want me to heal your hand?” Mitch asked, once they were stripped down enough for a nap and their teeth were cleaned.

Dylan shook his head. “It was ritual. It has to heal on its own. Otherwise it’s an affront to the Goddess. I didn’t mean my sacrifice enough to let it heal at Her speed.”

Mitch nodded, then turned Dylan’s palm upwards. “Can I see?” he asked, fingers at the edges of the bandage.

“Sure,” Dylan said, and let Mitch unwrap his hand.

The cut across his palm was shallow, but painful. There were a hundred less painful and more practical places to cut for blood, but the Solstice ritual demanded a flat slice across the palm, no deeper than a papercut. He hadn’t bled much, but the cut would sting for the week it took to heal, where his gloves gripped his stick.

Mitch looked at it, then helped Dylan smear Neosporin over it. Then he wound the bandage, and laid a kiss at the center.

“Time to sleep?”

Mitch was warm when he slept, his blocker on the bedside table next to Dylan’s amp. He was also definitely a cuddler. When Dylan woke up an hour later with a desperate need to piss, Mitch was balled up into Dylan’s side, one leg slung over Dylan’s hip. Dylan carefully disentangled himself and found the bathroom. When he returned, Mitch had sprawled out to fill all the available space.

Dylan nudged him aside and resettled, and Mitch snuffled in his sleep, seeking out Dylan’s warmth. He’d just rest here a little bit until Connor came to collect them, he figured, and eased back into a light doze.

**-|-|-|-**

Connor’s church was beautiful. Dylan had never been inside an Earth church before, and he was deeply appreciative of the stonework and candlelight. It was nearly midnight, and Dylan was always in favor of things done in the witching hour.

“It’s just Christmas Mass,” Connor said, when he gave Dylan a candle in a paper sleeve. “We don’t usually come to church at night.”

“It’s still beautiful.” Behind them, Connor’s older brother snorted. “What? I’m Spirit. Ay place of worship houses an incarnation of my Goddess.”

Dylan was quickly hushed and herded into a pew. He had Connor’s elbow crammed into his left kidney, and Mitch’s knee nearly slung over his own with how close they were.

“Maybe don’t say that here,” Connor told him quietly. “Some of the, ah, more conservative Catholics aren’t--in favor? of that line of thought. They don’t much like the idea of our God having anything to do with your Goddess.”

Dylan nodded. It was fine by him if they never knew the Goddess in her Spirit-form; not many did. Instead, he looked around the church, which was balls-to-the-walls aesthetic, as far as he was concerned. There were fresh flowers everywhere--a feat and a half for Edmonton in the winter, so there must have been a very overworked Caster specialized in plant growth somewhere around--and bejeweled tapestries hung from the ceiling. Charmed candles floated everywhere, providing a soft light, and he could feel the pulse of heating charms woven into the stonework of the building. Then there were the disarmament charms and permanent Breakings embedded in the floor tiles, and the long gowns worn by the people flitting about on the altar. It was fantastic in the candle-light.

He really liked the statue up at the front best, aesthetically speaking. It was a full-on representation of Connor’s faith, he guessed, although he wasn’t totally sure.

Dylan elbowed Connor a little, which wasn’t hard given their proximity. “That’s--that’s your Jesus, right?”

Connor nodded. “Yeah. We’re observing His birth now, but that’s representative of His death.”

“And he’s the one coming down the chimney tonight to visit us?”

Connor turned an interesting set of colors, but then organ music started up and the crowd surged to their feet, so whatever Connor was going to say would have to wait.

“Jesus is not Santa,” Connor hissed in a gap between songs, after a procession laden with incense and carrying both a cross and a book had passed them by. Around them, strangers were giving hugs and greeting everyone like old friends, so Dylan wasn’t really sure what the point of differentiating Santa and Jesus was.

The rest of the Mass was sung in Latin, so Dylan didn’t quite track the rest of it, but it sounded beautiful and the candlelight just made the experience a little more surreal.

Connor was recognized by a couple of kids on the way out, but otherwise they were left alone. There were a few tired, curious glances, but most people seemed more interested in their families and getting home than they did in a celebrity in their midst.

When they got back to Connor’s house, Mrs McDavid disappeared into the kitchen, followed by her husband and older son. Connor plopped down on the couch, yawning.

Mitch was staring at Connor’s Christmas tree, a little hypnotized by the blinking lights.

“Where are you laying out your altar?” Dylan asked.

Connor blinked. “What?”

“Your altar. You don’t have one set up already.”

“I’m--not tracking,” Connor said. “Why would I have an altar set up?”

“To welcome your Jesus!”

Dylan pouted as Connor cracked up laughing. He waited a minute for the giggles to die down, and then another minute when Connor burst into another gale of laughter upon seeing Dylan’s concerned expression.

“Okay, but seriously, do we need to lay out a welcome altar for your Jesus?” Dylan asked once Connor had calmed down. He picked at his bandaged palm and worried at his bottom lip. “Do I need--I can get my button-up out of my suitcase, but the TSA didn’t let me bring my ritual knife--”

Connor responded by laughing even harder; Dylan pouted.

“I’m trying to be considerate!” he protested. “Connor! This is serious!”

“Jesus doesn’t come to visit,” Mitch said, primly. “It’s one of their high priests who does. Saint Nicholas Clause, I think.”

Connor fell off the couch. His laughter was more in the vicinity of desperate wheezes for air.

“ _Davo_ ,” Dylan whined.

“We’ll just put out milk and cookies,” Connor finally managed. “And no one’s actually visiting the house, guys. We’ll open presents in the morning.”

“You’re not greeting your high priest at your holiday ritual?” Mitch asked, looking as aghast as Dylan felt. “Connor, we can--we can go somewhere if you need us to be gone for that. We understand.”

“That’s not--okay.” Connor rubbed at his face. “Let me tell you the story of Christmas and the story of Saint Nick, and then we’ll talk about how neither of them are rituals we perform, just traditions we have.”

“I mean, if it’s blood sacrifice, my hands haven't totally scabbed over yet,” Dylan offered helpfully. “I can--”

“ _No._ ”

Their conversation topic shifted to Connor trying to get Mitch to use a charm to light a fire in the fireplace, and Dylan having to Break the spell when Mitch’s fire got out of hand. Connor’s brother came in and started the fire by hand, swearing at all of them, but they did get a good fire going. They were eventually was interrupted by Mrs McDavid coming in with a plate of cookies, followed by Mr McDavid carrying a tray of mugs. From the smell, it was warmed milk with cinnamon.

Dylan took a mug, and then a dubious sip.

“This is good,” he said in surprise, and it was: hot, buttery, and creamy, tasting like cinnamon and sugar.

“It’s Snickerdoodle Milk,” Mr McDavid said. He had a milk mustache on his upper lip and seemed totally unconcerned by it. “Christmas tradition around here.”

“We’ll leave a mug out for Santa, and some of the cookies,” Connor added.

The parents finished their mugs, leaving the kids behind. Connor yawned and said something about getting the sheets and bedding set up for his brother on the couch; Mitch wandered off to claim a shower.

Left alone, Dylan considered the idea of an altar-less holiday observation and the plate of cookies. They were leaving it for Santa, but you couldn’t just leave a sacrifice out and expect a God to find it. Dylan looked at the fire, and something clicked in his brain.

Dylan fed a cookie to the fire and wrinkled his nose at the charred smell. Sacrifices to the Goddess were much more aromatic, but maybe Connor's Jesus liked a little char. Maybe he was Fire, or something. Fire-children tended to like the smell of smoke.

He looked at the glass of milk consideringly. He'd never tried to sacrifice a liquid before, so this was going to take some effort and planning.

“The fuck are you doing,” Connor's brother asked from behind Dylan. “Are you--don't put milk in the fire, Jesus.”

“Well, yes,” Dylan said. “Isn't that who this is for?”

Cam covered his face with both hands. “I’m mostly certain Connor explained this to you earlier,” he said, and took the cookie plate from Dylan. “Come on, we’re going to eat these in the morning.”

“But--”

“Dylan, just--go to bed, okay? It’s late, and the sooner we sleep, the sooner we open presents.”

**-|-|-|-**

It felt kind of strange to be around the McDavids on Christmas morning. It was pretty clear that this was an important holiday for them, even though the whole McDavid family was Null and the winter solstice was usually a Breaker holy day.

Connor’s older brother made waffles for breakfast, after which Mrs McDavid’s phone started ringing.

“That’ll be Grandma,” she said, and Connor practically hurdled the table to get to the phone.

Dylan and Mitch, by unspoken consensus, cleared the table and washed up while the McDavids chatted with their relatives in Toronto. Once the kitchen was clean, though, there was really nothing else for them to do.

Mitch jerked one shoulder at the McDavids. “Want to give them some family time?” he asked, voice carefully pitched low.

It sounded like a good idea, so Dylan went to put on another sweater and find his heavy jacket. Edmonton was miserably cold, and Dylan still wasn’t sure how Connor hadn’t frozen into an ice cube already.

Before they left, Mitch pressed a kiss to Dylan’s cheek, leaving behind a warming charm that seeped into Dylan’s scarf and coat.

“Thanks,” he said in surprise. Mitch just shrugged, and cast another warming charm on Dylan’s boots.

As they walked, Dylan let Mitch take his hand. It felt like his amp did, generally, but more human, less predictable. The magic between them hummed, even though Dylan’s bandaged palm.

“Want to walk around the block?” Mitch suggested, waiting for Dylan to nod.

Dylan mostly didn’t want to let go of Mitch’s hand, so he agreed.

Their palms stayed together as they walked, Dylan absorbing the little static pulses of Mitch’s magic. Somehow, it felt a million times better than his amp, even as if they were just the same thing.

Mitch pulled him towards a little cafe on the corner. It was open, lit in white fairy-bulbs, and relatively full.

“Probably fire-Casters. Willy has a ton of fairy-bulbs all over his apartment,” Mitch said. “Want to get hot chocolate?”

“You think Eichs has fairy-bulbs up?” Dylan asked. “Being fire, and all?”

Mitch stopped dead in his tracks, jerking Dylan back a little by the arm. His expression was first considering, then appalled. “Oh, fuck you for making me think about that. He probably has candles all over his apartment too.”

The shop did have a little brazier burning behind the till, and smoky incense at each doorway.

Mitch elbowed Dylan. “Told you so,” he said quietly.

Dylan got hot chocolate, a treat he rarely let himself have during the season. Mitch got a plain coffee, which he promptly doctored with sugar and cream.

“Remember when you salted my coffee?” Mitch asked once they were carefully ensconced at a table and Mitch had drawn a privacy charm onto the table.

Dylan licked a smear of whip cream off of the lip of his cup. “And you drank the whole thing? I was impressed. Real power move there, Mitch.”

“It was awful,” Mitch said, in a quiet tone like it was a confessed secret.

There was a plate of crispbread in the middle of the table, and pots of jam. Dylan thought it was probably a Fire-food, crispbread, since he’d never really seen it anywhere else, but it was definitely delicious. He could and would eat an entire sheet of if given the opportunity.

It took half a cup of hot chocolate and a good dent into their crispbread for Dylan to realize this was a date. It took the rest of Mitch’s coffee and the start of a refill, and the demolition of the little pot of apricot jam for the conversation to turn more serious.

“When you dated that girl--”

“Caroline,” Dylan said, just to watch Mitch’s nose wrinkle.

“Whatever. You were happy?”

“Why do you care?”

“Were you happy?” Mitch repeated, as if it mattered.

“She wasn’t a good kisser,” Dylan offered. “And I’m not marrying her.” Dylan shrugged loosely. “Just like any other date, I guess.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Mitch said. His tone was light, but the impact of his words sunk into Dylan’s skin. His wrist ached where their Quest simmered.

“No one else?” Dylan asked. He put his phone down. “Mitch?”

“Who else, when there was you?” Mitch shrugged. “It felt like cheating.”

“You feel like I cheated on you?” Dylan asked.

“Yes,” Mitch said, then, “no. I’m not sure.”

The truth hex glimmered at the edges of Dylan’s vision, so Mitch wasn’t lying. Dylan waited.

“It felt like it at the time I found out,” Mitch said finally. He reached for his cup, his sleeve riding up to reveal his own Quest-mark. “Because I thought of you as mine and me as yours. And--we’d slept together at that point. I thought you were more in than you were willing to say, ant to hear that--it was just a lot, then. Now, I guess I don’t see it so much as cheating, because it didn’t have the intent. You weren’t dating her while also dating me, and you weren’t doing it with the mindset of cheating, right? So, I don’t know. Both, I guess.”

Dylan frowned. “It hurt you.”

“It felt fucking awful,” Mitch confirmed. He gestured loosely, his rust-red Quest-mark slipping in and out of Dylan’s view. “When I found out at the Draft, I was pretty upset. Connor, uh--Connor stopped me from sleeping with a rando in revenge. Told me since you and I were approaching our Match differently, I’d end up hurt when you didn’t react the way I wanted you to.”

Dylan thought that over, thinking through the new information Mitch had given him.

“Connor’s a good egg,” he said finally. “I’m--I’m not sorry for dating her, because it was a good thing at the time. But I am sorry for hurting you, and not realizing I’d hurt you.”

“The past is a breath long gone,” Mitch said, in a near-perfect imitation of one of the Aunts, right down to the raised eyebrow at the end.

Dylan couldn’t help it; he cracked up laughing.

**-|-|-|-**

When they got back to the McDavid house, Mitch turned so they were facing each other. Mitch’s cheeks and nose were flushed red with the cold, and Dylan had the ridiculous urge to kiss the tip of Mitch’s nose.

Then he remembered there wasn’t really a reason to suppress that urge, and so he did. Mitch responded by tilting his chin up for a long, slow kiss.

“Do I win?” Mitch murmured, finally. He didn’t have to say what he was winning; he could only mean their Quest.

Dylan put his hands on Mitch’s hips and sank into the kiss.

“Not yet,” he said when they separated. “A Match is still pretty permanent, and you still have six months.”

“But I can call you my boyfriend?”

“If you want.” Dylan accepted another lingering kiss. “Mm. Okay, you’re getting good at that.”

They kissed for awhile on the porch, in what felt uncannily like a cheesy holiday film. Dylan couldn’t really bring himself to be bothered.

Or, he didn’t until Connor opened the window directly above them and dumped out a pan of water. It froze in mid air, showering them in powdery snow.

“No defiling my front walk!” he shouted down at them.

“We’re sharing a bed already! And you put us there!” Mitch yelled back. There was a small pile of snow melting in his hair. Dylan brushed it away, and leaned in to kiss Mitch again.

Above them, he heard Connor squawk and the window slam shut, and he had to break the kiss for laughter.

Connor greeted them at the front door when they deigned to come in. From the quiet of the living room and the kitchen, it was clear the family had opened presents and then separated to explore their new belongings and to take a few deep breaths.

“Are you gonna exchange your gifts? Do you need me to supervise, or whatever?” Connor demanded.

Mitch looked at Dylan, and shrugged. “Unless Dylan got me something punch-worthy again, you technically don’t have to.”

“I don’t think I did anything punch-worthy,” Dylan countered. “But I’ve got a gift for you anyways, Davo.”

Connor beamed. “And I’ve got one for the both of you, so meet me in the kitchen in five?”

Dylan had his presents wrapped and stashed in the bottom of his duffel; he grabbed them while Mitch rummaged through his own bag and collected his gift.

Connor opened his gifts first: Dylan had gotten Davo the curling rulebook and an annotated schedule for the Olympic games. Mitch had decided on the plush Olympic mascot, so it was good to see that Dylan wasn’t the only one being harassed by Connor’s Olympic obsession.

“Okay, magic quest present time,” Connor announced, when he was done admiring his new possessions.

Mitch nodded at Connor, and then produced his blue satin pouch from--somewhere. Fucking Casters.

“At this, the solstice, at the halfway point of our Oath, I give you this gift in good faith.”

Dylan’s own pouch was bright highlighter yellow, Otters yellow. He repeated Mitch’s words, and they exchanged bags.

Mitch’s gift was a game-worn puck, one of the ones Dylan had seen him worrying over before. He pushed at it a little, and gasped at the sheer power simmering off of it.

“Fifteen layers of charms,” Mitch said quietly. “For the five elements, and the three states. Each layer has nine tasks required to unlock the next layer. Your gift is inside.”

Dylan had never seen such an intricate puzzle, nevermind one so personalized to him.

“When did you have _time_?”

Mitch grinned, a little lopsided. “I work charms whenever I have downtime.”

“Goddess,” Dylan said, and turned the puck over again. “That’s--this is incredible. You’ve definitely shown me up.”

He put his box on the table and slid it over to Mitch. Mitch pulled the paper open, ripping into it and yanking the lid off the box in his eagerness.

Dylan watched Mitch’s expression as he pulled each item out: there was a handful of premade charm breaker packets, in case Mitch needed to undo something quickly, and a customized smelling salt blend.

“What are those?” Connor asked, leaning over to poke at them.

“Charm breaker packets,” Mitch said, looking at each of the cotton packets, labelled with masking tape and Dylan’s messy scrawl. “Dude, what the fuck is with you and giving me blood?”

Connor yanked his hand back. “Blood?”

“It’s not like you can get bloodborne illnesses from it,” Dylan said, laughing a little. “You need something from a Breaker to Break a charm, the same way you need something from a Caster to Cast a charm. This way Mitch can break some charms without me being there.”

“You need to stop giving me blood,” Mitch said flatly, but he was smiling as put everything back in the box.

Connor clapped his hands. “Time for my gift,” he said. “It’s for both of you.” Connor got up and started pulling things from the kitchen cabinets.

“Seriously, thank you,” Mitch said. “The puzzle--I put charms on stuff whenever I’m just kind of sitting and fidgeting, so it gave me something to do with that excess energy. You didn’t have to give me so many packets.”

“I wanted you to have something useful.” Dylan quirked a smile. “I’ve seen your OT ritual with Martin. You can use the smelling salts then.”

Mitch leaned over and pressed a kiss to Dylan’s cheek.

“Excuse me,” Connor’s voice cut in.

Connor set a shallow pan of water on the McDavid’s kitchen table. This might be Connor’s house in Edmonton, but there were pieces of furniture Dylan recognized from the McDavid home in Toronto.

“If I do this right, I should be able to scry a bit of your future,” Connor said, watching the pan intently until the water stopped sloshing. “Nuge helped me figure out some of the basics, but it’s a Null working. If I put oil in, and a drop each of your blood, I should be able to get something.”

Mitch looked at Dylan. Dylan bit his lip. “I don’t--how?”

“The science of it is actually beyond me,” Connor admitted. “But I know only Nulls can do it because our natural lack of magic means we can’t interfere with the working.”

“Did...Nuge tell you that?” Dylan asked, entirely dubious. He’d met Ryan Nugent-Hopkins before, and he wasn’t exactly jumping up and down to be part of Nuge’s magical workings.

“Nuge’s mom,” Connor said, grinning. “Nuge is--well, you’ve met him. He’s practically anti-magic, as Null as he is. Healing charms practically bounce off of him. One rebounded off of him at the beginning of the season and hit Drai, and Drai’s fingernails grew about an inch. They’ve had to spell a lotion and bandages to make the charms stick long enough.”

Mitch got a look on his face that Dylan just knew meant Nuge would be a target of some jinxes designed to rebound and hit other players the next time the Leafs played the Oilers.

“Okay. Let’s try this,” Dylan said, and watched as Connor bounced off to collect a few more materials.

The ritual itself was simpler than the ones Dylan was used to, but Null magic wasn’t exactly something he’d spent a lot of time around. Nulls could use magic items, and the magic inherent in natural items, but they didn’t produce magic of their own. As a result, the items Connor assembled around the table included a battery, two bottles of essential oils, a needle and a packet of bandaids, and a few other items Dylan didn’t totally recognize. There were no invocations, just Connor muttering to himself and grabbing for items off the table.

“Mitch, hand,” Connor ordered, and pricked Mitch’s left pointer finger to squeeze out a drop of blood. “Band-aid that--don’t heal it, you’ll put ambient magic in.”

Dylan offered his hand without being asked, and Connor pricked Dylan’s hand too.

Then they all leaned forward and watched the water.

It shimmered a little, and a hazy door with a white-painted frame came into existence. There were gentle blurs of ribbon, not unlike the ones bound around Mitch and Dylan’s wrists, and then the image cleared. No matter how much Connor growled at it, nothing else appeared.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work better,” Connor said. He looked deeply annoyed--at the scrying pan or himself, Dylan wasn’t sure. “A door? Red and blue ribbon? That’s not exactly helpful.”

“Maybe we’re not meant to know,” Mitch said. “Or the quest magic is interfering. If it would affect the outcome of the quest, the binding might have interrupted the spell.”

Connor was still pouting. “I thought for sure it would work.”

“From a Breaker to a Null--magic never, ever works the way you think it’s going to,” Dylan said. “I once Broke one of Little Matt’s snotty jinxes on Big Ryan, and I had the snotty jinx on me for like a week.”

“I tried to make Dylan sparkle like a Twilight vampire during a game once and he just left a glitter trail everywhere for a few days. He couldn’t break it, so I had to build a cleaner spell before he could break both the glitter jinx and the cleaner spell simultaneously,” Mitch put in. “Magic: it’s bizarre even when you know what you’re trying for.”

**-|-|-|-**

They went their separate ways from Edmonton; Mitch returned to Toronto, and Dylan headed for Tucson. It wasn’t the greatest feeling, being sent down, and worse, the Coyotes were playing the Leafs right after the break. Dylan wouldn’t be there to play against Mitch, which kind of sucked. He’d gotten to play against Connor and Ryan, though, so he figured he didn’t get to be sad about not playing against Mitch.

Mitch, on the other hand, had no compunctions about bitching about Coyotes management to Dylan via text. Dylan grinned at the messages and sent back a chirp about Mitch’s scoring slump and threatened Mitch with a trip to the Marlies so they could play against each other there.

Mitch replied with a string of incomprehensible string of emoji, and then Dylan had to turn his phone off for takeoff.

On the plane home, Dylan retrieved his puzzle puck from his backpack, and started teasing at the layers of magic wrapped around it. No one else on the plane was even vaguely glancing at him or his magic,

Dylan started working through the layers of spells. He felt Mitch in every inch of the casting. This would take weeks to untangle, would take hours of uninterrupted time to unlock. The woman next to him dozing the flight away didn’t even flinch at the sheer power humming from the puck. God bless Nulls, honestly, and their general commonality of not giving a fuck about power levels.

He spent the rest of the flight poking at the puzzles, getting a good sense of what needed to be detangled, what he could cut through and what would be a more delicate operation. He tentatively tried to Break one of the simpler puzzles and grinned when it activated a more difficult puzzle.

It was a gorgeous piece of magic, and Dylan couldn’t wait to take it apart.

**-|-|-|-**

He watched the Leafs-Yotes game with a bit of apprehension, and felt no shame in cheering for the Yotes over Mitch’s team.

He thought about how it had been Arizona and Boston with the double draft picks in 2015, and how Mitch never would have worn the blue and white if they’d declared the Match then. Maybe Dylan would still wear maroon and black, but then maybe they’d have ended up in Boston together.

Dylan tried not to linger on the choices past Dylan had made, because there was no comfort there. He was starting to understand why Mitch had pushed so hard for them to be Drafted together, but he also remembered how much they didn’t know about each other then, how much he hadn’t understood then.

Mitch scored on the Coyotes, and Dylan made a face. The Yotes needed to rally, and they were just not playing as cohesively as they needed to be.

He pulled out his phone and sent a message to Mitch, whose phone was probably buzzing in his locker until after the game.

 **DYLAN** (3:16 pm)  
I’m not gonna congratulate u for scoring on my team

 **DYLAN** (3:20 pm)  
But that was a pretty sick move

Watching the game, Dylan was tired, tired of wondering what it would be like to play on either side of that game, if he could have made a difference, if any of it was worth wondering over.

It was just a long reminder of a game that didn’t want him, no matter how much he wanted to be there with the Coyotes, playing against Mitch the way he’d played against Mitch for years.

But then the game ended in a shameful 7-4 score, and Dylan went to see if some of the other ‘Runners wanted to try some of the outdoor jogging trails now that the sun had set and the temperature had dropped.

Before he left, his phone buzzed in his pocket with a text from Mitch.

 **MARNSMALLOW** (5:55 pm)  
Thx ilu2

**-|-|-|-**

Eichs was, somehow, annoyingly and despite everything, one of Dylan’s good friends. They didn’t talk much--Sabres were more Marns’ team to worry about, being at least in their division. He was also both Null and fire, which were a very different sort of personality than Dylan’s.

But the Sabres sucked almost as much as the Coyotes, and Eichs was determined to be everyone’s parent. He was fretty as fuck, always trying to keep the rest of their draft class in one piece, and definitely in possession of zero tact whatsoever. Dylan kind of loved him a lot.

Eichs was an American Fire-Null, which half explained his general personality and half explained his general overreaction to any kind of Match news in their former top prospects group chat. Connor, the little shit-stirrer that he was, decided to drop news of Marns and Dylan’s Match into the chat (which had been defunct for six goddamn months, Connor, who the fuck are you fooling) and immediately Dylan had a barrage of texts from Eichs.

 **EICHS** (10:21 pm)  
Ru getting traded

 **EICHS** (10:22 pm)  
That’s not fair to our conference, man

 **EICHS** (10:22 pm)  
The leafs are already a nightmare with forwards they don’t need u 2

 **EICHS** (10:23 pm)  
Bottom of the league bro to bottom of the league bro i gotta know

 **EICHS** (10:23 pm)  
stromer

 **EICHS** (10:23 pm)  
dylAN

 **EICHS** (10:23 pm)  
DYLAN

 **DYLAN** (10:24 pm)  
Not planning on it

 **EICHS** (10:24 pm)  
Then wtf is davo on about in the gc

 **DYLAN** (10:25 pm)  
Davo’s a dick

 **EICHS** (10:25 pm)  
Not news

 **EICHS** (10:26 pm)  
Then wtf is actually going on w/u and marns

 **EICHS** (10:26 pm)  
Bc its getting weird dude

 **EICHS** (10:26 pm)  
I’m not above setting the amerks on u

 **DYLAN** (10:27 pm)  
Chill dude we play each other like 2x a year that’s not really a threat

 **EICHS** (10:27 pm)  
Bitch i know someone everywhere

 **EICHS** (10:28 pm)  
And i will fiNd YOU

 **EICHS** (10:28 pm)  
Or marns i can deffo find marns

 **EICHS** (10:29 pm)  
Keller owes me one from ntdp i can get him to kick your ass

 **EICHS** (10:29 pm)  
Yyou will never sleep peacefully again

Dylan put his head down on the table and wondered when he’d gotten an extra parent. His phone buzzed again, then fell ominously silent before ringing. He answered without looking at the caller ID, fully expecting it to be Eichs.

He was not expecting Noah Hanifin at his most harried.

“Please fix Eichs,” Noah said, sounding exhausted. “He’s threatening to buy tickets to Arizona to interrogate you personally.”

“What the _fuck_ ,” Dylan said flatly.

“Oh, I’m almost about to fly out there myself and kick your ass, but I have slightly more patience than our nerdy friend up North, and _he’s_ on IR right now.”

Dylan groaned. “Does everyone in the league know my business?”

“Stromer, your older brother plays in the league. Half the league not only knows your business, they have your baby photos.”

Dylan resigned himself to explaining a lot about his personal life to a lot of people.

**-|-|-|-**

Dylan got bumped back up to the Coyotes again in March, for his third stint with the Coyotes in a single season.

Then, on the same day, the sent him back down before he even had the chance to leave Tucson.

**-|-|-|-**

Mitch called him in a towering rage.

Or, Auston Matthews facetimed Dylan from Mitch’s phone so Dylan could see Mitch’s fury. Through the tiny phone screen, Dylan could see Mitch was a sparking hurricane of rage.

“Probably not the most helpful thing,” Matthews said, voice tinny through the phone speakers. “But your boy is feeling very strongly about this.”

“Fucking _cowards_ ,” Dylan heard Mitch shout. “Gonna lay a _hex_ on--”

“I am about to eat my way out of my diet plan, and then find a teammate to get drunk with,” Dylan said flatly, wiggling a little out of his blanket cocoon. “Mitch can call me when he’s in less danger of setting the curtains on fire.”

“--incompetent _fucking_ bollocking _front office_ , how the hell can they be so blind--”

Matthews chuckled on the other end of the line. “You’re handling this better than I would have.”

“I’ve got more experience with it,” Dylan admitted. He pushed his hood back a little as the camera flipped to show Matthews instead of Mitch. “Twelve hours of being sorry and miserable, and then I have to just get up and get going. I’m on hour four, so I figure I’ve got eight more hours to feel like shit, and you’re cutting in on valuable moping time.”

“--unfit to coach PeeWee games, blind to talent--”

“Mitch just set the curtain on fire, I’m impressed you called that.” Matthews got up with a heaving sigh, the camera jerking around enough to make Dylan a little dizzy. “Hey, Marns, try only breaking shit within grabbing distance, okay? I’m not following you around your house.”

“ _\--whores_ of Satan,” Mitch hissed, and then there were stomping footsteps.

“Someone’s been talking to McDavid, then.” The camera resettled. “You’re seriously doing okay?”

“Blow to the self-esteem, but I’m the warning to the 2015 Draft, y’know. Don’t feel to bad about yourself, it could totally be worse. You could be in my shoes.”

Matthews quirked half a smile at that. “It's not fair of them, and I hope you know it’s very much them and not you. Eichs is already threatening to hex half the ‘Yotes coaching staff next time the Sabres play Arizona. I’ve seen your game tape with Marns.”

“He--watches my game tape?”

“Never misses any of your games if he can help it,” Matthews confirmed. “He’s got an AHL streaming plan just for you. I’m pretty sure he’s on some kind of Roadrunners mailing list, because he got a beer glass and a tote bag in the mail last week. Opened it in front of Brownie--uh--Connor Brown, I guess you know him--”

“He was my captain for a year,” Dylan said dryly. “Yeah, I know him.”

“--fuck off, man, it’s still weird who knows who, fuck off--but Marns opened it in front of Brownie and he’s still getting chirped about it, so.”

There was a cracking noise from the background that Matthews barely looked up at.

“Did he just turn himself into something?”

“If he did he’s undoing it himself,” Matthews said. “Hey, uh, my mom is threatening to adopt you, so if a short lady shows up at your house sometime in the next two days with tortilla soup, it’s not as random as you think it is.”

Dylan frowned. “Why?”

“She thinks there’s a resonance and an intentional magical symmetry to the Torontonian Caster in Arizona and the Arizonian Caster in Toronto, so she’s been on my ass to get your number from Mitch. If you get called up any time later in the season, I’m pretty sure she’s going to try to billet you.”

“I’ll--keep that in mind, I guess.”

“No pressure on it, just thought you’d want a heads-up. You want me to try to get Mitch on the line, or tell him to call you back later?”

“Whatever.”

Matthews rolled his eyes. “Hey, Mouse--your boy called!”

There was a crash, and then a clattering sound. The screen whirled in a blur of color and then there was Marns’ face.

“Your management are dumbasses,” Mitch said earnestly, and Dylan settled into his blanket nest to shit-talk the Coyotes for a little bit.

**-|-|-|-**

 

Dylan had already spent a couple of months prodding at Mitch’s puck, but the season was drawing to a close and he still hadn’t cracked it. He was getting close, down to the last few puzzles, but what was left were tricky as hell.

On a flight from Tucson to Iowa--fucking Iowa, and fuck the Iowa Wild in particular--Dylan retrieved the puck and cracked the second-to last layer.

Dylan fumbled and found the final layer of spells. If the other layers screamed Mitch, this layer whispered it. This magic was purely Mitch, all ambient layers stripped off; this was Mitch whispering in Dylan’s ear instead of shouting across a crowded rink. Dylan tugged a little at it, trying to find a chink he could slip through to unlock the final layer. When he pushed at it, he could tell this was how Mitch felt, shimmering contentment and excitement. Itt took a moment, but--this was how Mitch felt for him specifically.

There was wonder and joy, a deep sense of affection and curiosity. Dylan felt his way through the magic, searching for something, anything.

It felt like a daydream as he sat there, turning it over and over in his hands, considering how Mitch might have built it and how Dylan might take it apart.

Dylan frowned. This layer was purely Mitch in a gift for Dylan, with no obvious solve.

It was a long flight, so he felt comfortable sinking into the magic and exploring, turning the puck itself over and over in his hands.

He startled when someone tapped his shoulder; looking up, he saw Andrew Campbell taking the seat next to him that had previously been inhabited by a snoring Lawson.

“What’re you working on there?” Campbell asked. “Looks complicated.”

Dylan shrugged and turned the puck over once more. “It’s a puzzle I’m trying to solve.”

Campbell leaned over and took a long look. “Mind if I take a crack at it?”

Dylan shook his head and put the puck back into its little satin pouch. “No, it’s--personal.”

“Part of your quest?”

That started Dylan again. “I--”

“Sorry if it’s rude to ask, but you’ve been sulking.” Campbell settled back into the seat, watching the expressions that shifted across Dylan’s face. Dylan did his best to keep those under control, but he knew Campbell was more perceptive than he generally let on. “Last time I saw someone so hung up on a quest, it fucked with their head. I’m still not sure he’s better now.”

Dylan held up a finger, and fished for his phone. “I gotta--”

“Yeah, secrecy pact, I get it.” Campbell looked amused. “Did you forget we’re on a plane?”

Dylan dropped the phone. “Fuck.”

“Go nonspecific.”

“It’s not my quest,” Dylan said hesitantly, turning over what he could and couldn’t say in his head. “I mean--it is, but I issued it. I’m not completing it.” His fingers drifted to the blue ribbon that lurked under his skin, looking for all the world like a tattoo.

“Why not call it off, then?”

Dylan grimaced. “It’s...it’s about my Match.”

“Ah.”

Campbell was a Breaker like Dylan; his Match was his wife, but his on-ice D-partner was a powerful Caster. If anyone was going to get it, it would be Campbell.

“He’s...it’s still my childhood match, and I’m not sure I want it to be him, you know? He wants it to be permanent.”

“You don’t?”

Dylan shrugged. “He lives in Canada still. And I’m out here. It’d be...messy, if we completed the bond.”

“But you like him. Platonic or romantic match, do you think?”

“Romantic,” Dylan admitted, cheeks flushing. “I like him a lot, but--what’s the point of having a Match if we’re in different places all the time?”

“So the puck is--”

“It’s his second gift of the Quest. I’m meant to solve each layer to get the gift inside, but I’m stuck on the last layer.”

“Wanna talk me through it?”

“Wouldn’t you rather sleep?”

Campbell shook his head. “Quests, magic puzzles, helping out my team? Nah, nothing I’d rather do but this.”

Dylan shrugged, then held out the puck.

They talked for awhile, Campbell leaning over to look at the puck but carefully not touching it. After a few minutes, Campbell hummed a little.

“Excuse me if this is rude, but, your Quest. If I’m understanding right--and no, don’t try to confirm, I don’t want your privacy spell backfiring any more than you do--you started out seeing each other differently and part of your quest is to change that. If your Match wanted this step of the quest to reflect themselves--how would they do it?”

Campbell patted Dylan on the shoulder and wandered back down the aisle.

Dylan turned Campbell’s advice over in his head, and then considered the puck.

“You motherfucker,” he said aloud, and figured out what he had to do.

**-|-|-|-**

Mitch wanted Dylan to see himself the way Mitch saw him, so that was what Dylan had to do, consider why Mitch wanted this Match so badly.

He was also getting really tired of hearing Mitch and Match together. Mitch-Match was starting to get ingrained in his thinking patterns, which he was _so done with._

He settled into a cross-legged position on his bed, and held the puck in his cupped palms. He wasn’t sure how long this would take, but he wasn’t due anywhere until practice the next morning. He had some time.

He sunk into the magic, and felt for the quiet emotions Mitch had tied into his spellwork.

There was a sense of pride, that they were a Matched set who could work together at an incredible level of synchronicity. There was excitement and wonder, a hope for what they could do together. The affection was there, a joy in their bickering and the amount that Dylan cared about everything, the flare of happiness whenever they texted or interacted on instagram or snapchat, or whatever. Here was a warm sense of belonging, scant inches between Dylan’s childhood bed and the trundle Mitch frequently slept on; here was competition, a drive to push himself to catch up to Dylan on the ice and off.

And then, most embarrassingly, there was a deep sense of beauty; Mitch thought Dylan was beautiful when he smiled, and handsome when he didn’t, and hot when he was pissed.

There was a thought, a daydream well-worn around the edges. Dylan flushed when he sank into it: it was Mitch in Dylan's Otters jersey--no, his team Canada one--no, his Roadrunners one--no, a Leafs’ jersey with Strome across the back--no, his Coyotes one, and nothing else. It was Mitch crowding into Dylan’s space, coy and flirty, and Dylan stepping closer to grab at Mitch's ass and claim a kiss.

That daydream faded into a memory, the first time they played against each other, tiny Dylan flushed with rage as Mitch scored, and Mitch thinking _that's my Dylan, my person_ , and a burst of pride and competitiveness when Dylan scored right back.

Here was Mitch remembering all of their firsts through his own eyes, wondering how Dylan remembered them.

Here was a breathless daydream, Mitch Strome, Dylan Marner, Mitch Marner-Strome, Dylan Strome-Marner, finding out people sometimes called them Stromarner in shorthand, stumbling across a blog post consisting only of photographed hugs between them at tournaments, breathless wonder at how even strangers recognized the bond between them.

Here was Mitch talking about angles and the geometry of Casting and Dylan watching him with a smile on his face, like he was thrilled to hear about something Mitch loved, even if he’d never truly understand casting; and he felt Mitch wish with everything in his body and soul that Dylan would just talk to him, about anything, about Breaking or the ‘Runners, about the little things Mitch would never fully understand.

Dylan sank into the way Mitch saw him and wanted him, and understood that tiniest bit more why Mitch had chosen to dig his teeth into this, and how Mitch had chosen Dylan as his hill to die on.

The final layer of spells cracked and fell away, and Dylan was finally able to touch the cool, magic-less rubber of the puck itself.

Mitch had sawn the puck in half, somehow--the damn things were near indestructible, so Dylan would like to know _how the hell_ \--and hollowed it out. A fine silver chain and a necklace charm rested inside, and Dylan was being quite literal about the charm.

It was a rectangular pendant, half the length of his pinky and about as wide. Engraved on it was a living coyote that breathed with fine silver fur, and slow blinking eyes. It was curled up on its tail, and it whuffled at him when he poured it into his palm, and he saw the number 93 on the flipside in gold. At contact with his skin, the charm pulsed lightly under his fingertips.

He immediately called Mitch.

“You got it open?” Mitch asked immediately, sounding pleased. “I felt the charm activate.”

“Are you not in practice?”

“The majority of our time is not spent in practice,” Mitch said. “But Matts and I were doing weights. I was thinking I’d get a call from you soon anyways.”

“The last layer was near-impossible to figure out.”

“It was supposed to be.” Dylan could hear a rustling in the background, and then the click of a door. “Did you just change rooms?”

“Camping out in the bathroom,” Mitch said cheerfully. “Come on, put it on. The necklace is a match to mine. It has a pair charm on it.”

“How?” Dylan rolled the charm over in his hand, and felt the fluttering heartbeat. It did feel like Mitch was just out of a workout, with his heartrate up.

“You gave me your blood,” Mitch said. “I’m giving it back. Or--well, I’m giving you three drops of mine, and I’m carrying three drops of yours. It’s a contact spell. As long as you’re wearing it, I can feel your pulse, and you can feel mine.”

“Again-- _how_?”

“I had to ask Marty, but he’s got one with his wife. Willy’s got one with his brother, matching charm necklaces, but his dad helped them make those. It needed blood to activate.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I fucked up the number charm on the back like three times, and Matts finally got to the point where he was like, I’m not touching the thing, and I realized it was because I was making it for you, and my magic didn’t want another Breaker involved.”

“You’re saying your magic is _jealous_.”

“What, and yours isn’t?” Mitch sounded entirely too pleased with himself. “Did I pass your test? You gave me your blood, and I gave it back.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to find a workaround,” Dylan admitted. “So, good job, I guess.”

“I’m pretty proud of myself,” Mitch said, and Dylan was kind of proud too.

**-|-|-|-**

There was a ritual component of every quest, bound up in triplicate. Dylan had always thought it somewhat romantic, the casting, the proving, and the reckoning, the intricate steps laid out in hundreds of years of magic and tradition. He and Mitch had stepped through the casting and the proving, and now they only had the reckoning.

Dylan's season ended far too early, but there was a reckoning awaiting him in Toronto.

The ‘Runners made it into the Calder Cup playoffs; the Coyotes didn’t even come close to a Stanley Cup playoff berth. The Leafs did get a berth, but by mutual agreement, Dylan and Mitch didn’t talk about their playoffs. The ‘Runners got dumped out of the playoffs sooner than any of them would have liked.

Dylan came home to Toronto just in time for the Leafs to unceremoniously be knocked out of their playoffs. Mitch called a few times between the final loss and locker cleanout, never mentioning hockey. The sting of recent failure was enough for both of them, and Dylan wasn’t going to push. It was a feeling he was all too fucking familiar with

**-|-|-|-**

Mitch invited Dylan to his apartment to watch each game of the Cup finals. In the past, Dylan had watched the Cup games at a watch party, or camped out in the basement with the whole set of Strome-McLeod boys.

This was just Dylan and Mitch in Mitch’s apartment, the TV playing the game and Mitch’s ankle hooked around Dylan’s.

“You’re spending the night?” Mitch asked, when the game was over.

“If you’ll loan me some pyjamas, sure.”

They migrated slowly to Mitch’s bedroom, tired and lazy. Mitch chucked a pair of shorts at Dylan, and stripped off right there, utterly shameless as he shimmied into his own sleep clothes.

Dylan used Mitch’s toothbrush to clean his teeth, and crawled into bed first while Mitch checked the door was locked and the house lights were off. When he did come to bed, Mich hardly bothered with his own side of the bed, and immediately tucked himself in close to Dylan.

“Tell me a story,” Mitch said, half-curled up onto Dylan's chest. “One of the Aunts’ stories.”

“I’m not so good at it,” Dylan hedged.

Mitch poked him. “ _Story_.”

“Fine, you asshole.” Dylan shifted, and rubbed at the spot where Mitch had poked him. “Goddess, that was sharp, you fucker.”

Mitch rolled his eyes. “Just start the story, you drama queen.”

“Fuck off, fine. Uh, come listen, take heart,” Dylan said, the familiar words to begin a story in the Spirit style settling his soul. “Over three lands, and across three oceans, and beyond three mountains, this story is true. A sorry story is one told with no one to hear. Do you hear me, listener?”

Dylan had to nudge Mitch a little bit, but Mitch did respond correctly. “I hear you, Teller.”

“Here is a story of a quest, and an end of days, but first there is a beginning. Did you know that once, Breakers were known as the Reckoners?”

“How could they be, Teller?” Mitch responded.

“To break a spell is to bring a consequence,” Dylan said, bringing a hand up to card through Mitch's hair. “It is to restore a balance, to close a loop; to Break is to bring forth a judgement on a Caster. In that land, far away, there was a Reckoning that wove itself into the fabric of time, spreading magic as jewels into the Goddess’ broadcloth…”

**-|-|-|-**

Mitch invited Dylan over to watch the next game in the series. This game they were a little louder, little more prone to discussing the plays and the goals as fans, rather than as players who failed to make the final.

At second intermission, Mitch muted the TV and turned to Dylan.

“What’s going on?” Dylan asked.

Mitch closed his eyes and held out his hands. “I, Mitch, Caster of the Earth, give you a favor, no strings, no conditions. Anything within my power, I give and give freely.”

Dylan was silent. A no-strings favor meant everything here. It meant that Dylan could request a repudiation, and Mitch would have to carry through. It meant that even if Dylan was in love with Mitch, he could ask for the Match to be split, and Mitch would do it.

“I accept the gift, and see it good.”

Mitch’s eyes were still closed, but his eyelashes fluttered just the slightest bit. Dylan shifted forward.

“I, Dylan, Breaker of the Goddess, give you a kiss and an answer.”

Dylan took that last step forward, and pressed his lips against Mitch’s. He let his fingers tangle in Mitch’s hair, and took his kiss.

When he pulled back, Mitch sighed, a delicate, shaky sound.

“Yes,” Dylan said, and gasped as he found himself suddenly in Mitch’s lap on the trundle. Dylan swore when Mitch jostled them; his top incisor had reopened his split lip in the movement. “Fuck, _ow_.”

“You’re bleeding,” Mitch said, pressing his thumb to the cut. When he pulled back, Dylan’s blood was on Mitch’s fingers, red and slick.

“Yeah, I fucking _noticed_.”

Mitch grabbed Dylan’s wrists and pushed him back, back, back, until Dylan’s knees hit Mitch’s bed and he tumbled onto his back.

Dylan was taller, and he had weight on Mitch, but in the end he’d always go where Mitch wanted him, because he knew they wanted the same things.

“Hey,” Mitch said, settling himself into the vee of Dylan’s legs. His fingers were loose around Dylan’s wrist, and they’re slick with Dylan’s blood.

“Hey, Dylan said back, then “did you want to watch the rest of the game?”

“Fuck the game,” Mitch said flatly. “Neither of us as playing and it’s not really the final anyways.”

Dylan couldn’t disagree with that, so he pulled Mitch down for another kiss, relishing the sting of his split lip and the warmth of Mitch lying on his chest.

“We’re gonna get married,” Mitch said.

Dylan rolled his eyes. “You have to propose first, Marns.”

“It’ll come when you least expect it,” Mitch said, and that was a promise Dylan couldn’t wait to see kept.

**-|-|-|-**

If Dylan had been slightly dumber, he might have thought accepting the Match and completing the quest was the end of it.

Because real life was a bitch, there was still a hell of a lot to figure out.

It’s not a happily ever after just because Dylan has agreed. They still have to figure out how this is going to work, and _make_ it work.

Mitch called his agent, and Dylan called his, and after two near-aneurysms from their agents and one minor truth hex, they had a proverbial mountain of paperwork to fill out in triplicate.

Dylan flipped through the stack of papers, looking at the title of each form. Mitch had just grabbed a pen and started writing, but Dylan wanted a glimpse at the next indefinite forever he was going to have to spend filling this shit out. He only saw a few of them as he thumbed through, but they all had intimidating titles and multicolored post-it flags everywhere. There were things like the DECLARATION OF MATCH INTENT and the WAIVER OF MATCH DRAFT RIGHTS; there was PERSONAL SWORN STATEMENT (BREAKER), a MATCH COMPATIBILITY RESULTS form, and a DECLARATION OF QUEST COMPLETION (INTERNATIONAL) packet at least fifteen pages thick. None of that included the supporting documentation folder that they hadn’t even opened yet.

“You’re lucky I love you,” Dylan grumbled, looking at how many places he was going to need to sign. “Oh, fuck, I still haven’t memorized my American SSN, and they’re gonna want that, aren’t they?”

“Have you gotten to SWORN STATEMENT (CLAN LEADER) yet?”

“Not yet.”

Mitch slid a form across the table. “So, your mom gets to sign off on if we’re a platonic or a romantic Match, and--ah, here we go--’if consummated, date of.’”

Dylan put his head on the table, right on top of the twelve million forms. “I fucking hate everything.”

Mitch patted him on the head, and kept filling out the paperwork.

**-|-|-|-**

The Coyotes front office was not wildly pleased with Dylan for not declaring his Match at the time of the Draft, but there wasn’t really anything they could legally do about it. From his agent, Dylan heard that the Coyotes and the Leafs were entering into a tense standoff over if either of them could be traded: the Leafs weren’t giving up Mitch, and the Coyotes weren’t giving up Dylan.

Mitch offered to request a trade to Arizona. Arizona didn’t have a ton of money but they also don’t have a ton of great players clamoring to come play with them. Dylan didn’t want that: the Coyotes might be a sinking ship, but they’re his sinking ship. Dylan also knew that Mitch would never be as happy anywhere but Toronto.

It was something they were just going to have work out.

**-|-|-|-**

 

Connor’s gift to them was a set of scrying mirrors, and a referral to a magic door company.

“It won’t be cheap,” he warned. “And your passport situation will be hell, but--you can spell a door in your home to step across the border and into the other’s home.”

It took nearly a year, more paperwork than Dylan had ever seen in his life, and enough interviews and background checks that his head spun, but eventually they had their door, linking Mitch's Toronto apartment to Dylan’s house in Arizona.

The door was keyed to their blood; no one but Dylan and Mitch could pass through it, and they both had to be present for the lock to click open. They had to call a customs agent before using it, which was a situation Dylan hadn’t ever anticipated ending up in.

It was a pain to get it set up, but it gave them what they needed. Dylan slept in Mitch’s bed whenever he could. They were able to live their lives together, and still play for their own teams.

They were only approved for the portal door because of their Match level and their careers, and it cost them all of Mitch’s Schedule A bonus and a bit more besides, but it was theirs. It’s a future, and a promise.

**-|-|-|-**

 

Mitch had bought a ring at a jeweler's, Auston tagging along to give advice. Dylan wasn’t one for fancy rings or heritage stones or any of that--he’d want something simple, workable, something that wouldn’t get in the way while playing shinny, something he could slip on a chain and keep over his heart. Mitch ended up buying something simple and flat, something that wouldn't catch on anything he chose to be working with, nothing that would flash too much as he fiddled with his phone and texted and played vidya. Auston nodded in approval, ever solemn and serious.

Mitch kept it in his bedside drawer, tucked into the little blue box. He wouldn't ask now, but he'd ask eventually--when Dylan was sure to say yes.

Of course, Dylan being Dylan, he accepted before Mitch even got the chance to ask.

Dylan found it and put it on, and sat in the kitchen, waiting for Mitch to wake up. It took Mitch seven minutes and two slices of pizza to notice the gold band on Dylan’s finger, and he nearly choked on his food.

Dylan waited.

“Marry me?” Mitch said, and since the ring was already on Dylan’s finger, he couldn’t very well say no, now could he?

Dylan leaned across the table and kissed him, and let that be his answer.

“A year and a day, and I’ll marry you,” Dylan said. “Start the clock, Marner.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is a...god knows what mashup of every fic I wanted to see in the world, and then some. Half of this was me wanting to write a fic, and half was me wanting to figure out worldbuilding for an original project later down the road, so. It’s a little messy in places, but it’s definitely ridiculous.
> 
> Fandomwise, a tip of my hat to angularmomentum’s “the elementary disposal of weighted objects” for the magic-and-hockey vibe I was going for, daisysusan’s “a different kind of burning” for the idea of arranged marriage Dylan/Mitch, and somehowunbroken’s “sleep tight” for several consersations about how magic is traditionally bound up in triplicate.
> 
> I owe about a million thanks to a million people for putting up with my whining and obsessive protectiveness of Dylan Strome, chief among them Ace, Finny, and Becky. Also, shoutout to the Arizona Coyotes for FUCKING OVER THE LAST THIRD OF THIS OKAY YOU HAVE CALLED UP DYLAN TWICE AND SENT HIM DOWN TWICE BETWEEN ME OUTLINING THIS AND WRITING IT DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH REWRITING HAS HAD TO BE DONE.
> 
> Come chat with me on tumblr, y’all, I’m over at satellitesandfallingstars.
> 
> ETA: Can't believe I have to say this, but this is not a spinoff of any other author's work. Any similarities are wildly unintentional and entirely distressing to me, so this piece may undergo edits sooner rather than later.


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